In this eye-opening episode, legendary Amazon expert Kevin King reveals game-changing insights about how Amazon's search and ranking systems really work. From the little-known concept of GeoRank to Amazon's powerful AI engine Cosmo, Kevin shares insider knowledge that every Amazon seller needs to understand to stay competitive in 2024 and beyond.

Key topics covered:

• The truth about Amazon's GeoRank system and why your products might rank differently across regions – plus actionable strategies to influence your rankings in specific geographic areas.
• How Amazon's Cosmo AI analyzes your listings, images, and customer feedback to determine visibility – and why you need to start "selling to the AI," not just optimizing for keywords.
• Why the future of Amazon search is shifting from keywords to intent-based shopping, and how tools like Rufus are changing the way customers discover products.
• Fascinating insights into Amazon's incredible data collection and how it's shaping the future of personalized shopping experiences.
• Advanced marketing strategies combining AI with custom audiences and personalization that are generating "ridiculous conversion rates.’

Whether you're doing $100K or $100M on Amazon, this conversation with one of the most knowledgeable figures in the Amazon space will transform how you think about optimization and marketing on the platform.

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Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(03:08) Understanding GeoRank

(18:09) Exploring Cosmo

(21:24) From Keyword to Intent-Based Search

(27:47) Brand Building Beyond Products and Problem-Solution Marketing

(32:12) Embracing AI and Customer-Centric Sales

(39:15) Conclusion

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Show Notes:

• Kevin King - LinkedIn
• Billion Dollar Sellers Newsletter
• Marketing Misfits Podcast
• Norm Farrar - LinkedIn 
• AMPM Podcast
• Helium 10 
• Tom Shipley - LinkedIn
• T&C Summit
• Podcast Movement Show
• North Face
• Patagonia 
• My First Million Podcast
• George Mack - X
• DataZapp
• Reddit

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Connect With Brett: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/ 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce 
• Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/ 

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Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, Trevor Crump, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Bryan Porter and more

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Transcript:

Kevin:

Us as sellers, we use the tools and we try to influence what Amazon, what we think our product is. But Amazon's like, yeah, Kevin, you can say that your product's the best or it does this or this or this, but reality is what the customers say.

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today I have an esteemed guest. This guest is a legend in the Amazon space, billion dollars sellers. My guess is Kevin King. He's the host of two Count 'em two podcast Marketing Misfits with our mutual friend Norm, also the AMPM podcast with Helium 10. Been hosting that for two and a half years. He's had over 220,000 students host the billion dollar Seller summit, the billion dollar seller newsletter, and then he is also an Amazon seller. So he's doing this stuff in real life on a daily basis and is just doing very, very well. So probably didn't need to do that introduction because if you're in the Amazon space, I say the name Kevin King, you know the guy. So with that, Kevin, welcome to the show and how's it going

Kevin:

Man? It's going great, man. You talk about all my gray hairs, how I got all my gray hairs here, doing all this crazy stuff.

Brett:

Yeah, I'm joining you, man. I'm joining. I got the grain, the goatee here, and so it happens. It happens for sure. But yeah, you and I connected at our mutual friend Tom Shipley's event in Nashville

Kevin:

Deal. I think we met before. I think we met at a trafficking conversion years

Brett:

Ago. We have for sure, for sure.

Kevin:

I think we met somewhere, or maybe even more than that maybe.

Brett:

I think you're right. There's been TNC, we both, I think both spoke there and then a couple other events. But most recently was that Tom Ship was event. As we were chatting, we're like, we got to do a podcast together. What are we doing here? Haven't ever made it happen. So yeah, we're 300 episodes into the eCommerce Evolution podcast and just getting Kevin on the

Kevin:

Show. Congratulations.

Brett:

Yeah, I was looking that up. You doing a little research on chat GPT, less than 1% of podcasts get to 300 episodes, so I

Kevin:

Just went to pretty podcast movement show in August in DC and they actually said there that the average podcast makes it to seven episodes.

Brett:

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I heard. There's this phenomenon called Pod fade where

Podcast hosts is like, eh, I thought this would be more fun, or I thought this would be easier. I thought I'd publish one episode and become famous. Does not happen. Right? It's a grind. It's a grind, but you got to love it. So a variety of topics I want to talk about. Kevin, I want to get into AI a little bit as we go. I know you're doing some really unique things with ai. I know you're talking to just some of the top sellers on Amazon, some of the top brands that are doing cool stuff on Amazon, but you introduced this concept that I was not very familiar with at all. And in one of your newsletters recently about rank, so ranking on Amazon from a geographic basis or at a geographic level, can you explain what geo rank is and maybe some misconceptions around ranking that negatively influenced the way people approach selling on Amazon?

Kevin:

Yeah, sure. So Amazon, for the longest time it was no matter where they had the product, they would ship it to you. So that's why it was two day delivery. So if I'm living in Austin, Texas and I order some construction paper that's sitting in the closest warehouse is Los Angeles, Amazon would get that over to a warehouse near to me and within two days and get that to me, maybe they should sent that by Prime Air. Maybe they sent it by before Prime Air, they were using regular airlines and the cargo holes and Cargo Airlines and they would get that over close to me. And you know what, this is getting a little bit expensive to actually do this. We need to change this system to where we only show results for what's nearby so we can get to 'em the same day or we can get to them within a day and cut down on our distribution costs. We're going to charge it at the same time we're going to raise the fees to the sellers so we can make a little bit more margin. That

Brett:

Has been the theme of this year. How do we charge sellers more?

Kevin:

Exactly. But if you take a look at their p and l, look at how much more profit they had off of that. So they're raising the price and cutting the expenses, which is smart business. So what they've done is, so they basically went to, it was a direct route. So it's like in the old days of airlines before deregulation where if you wanted to fly from Los Angeles to Waco, Texas, there had to be a direct plane or you had to go through some other little city. And the airlines came up with this hub and spoke system where they said, okay, we're going to have hubs and like American Airlines for example, has a hub in la Phoenix, Dallas, Chicago, Chicago, Miami, JFK, and Charlotte and almost all their flights at some point go through one of those hubs. They do have some directs in between, but a lot of almost all the flights go to those songs and then they disperse the people out. It's a much more efficient system. So about two years ago, Amazon started like, we got to get control of this distribution system. We have, I don't know what the number of warehouses they have now is 300, 3 50, something like that.

Brett:

It's a lot.

Kevin:

So what you used to do is you would send into what's called a cross stock. And so if when you go into fulfill to Amazon, FB, a, Amazon would say ship it to these one, two, or sometimes you get lucky and they say ship everything from Austin to Dallas. Other times they'd split it up into three locations all based on their algorithms and where they need the stuff and their systems. But a lot of times from one of my businesses, I sell wall calendars. I would just ship to Dallas, it's convenient for me, Austin and Dallas, it's cheap. Gets there today, it gets checked in quick and it would go to what's called a crosstalk. And these crosstalks have airline code. All the Amazon warehouses start with the same as the local DFW one, DFW two, whatever. And those docs didn't store it where our shipping doesn't store the product, it actually disperses it out.

So if I send a thousand calendars in, their algorithm will say, oh, take these thousand, break it down, send 27 to Waco, 16 to Sherman, 25 to Houston, and 82 to Austin, whatever. And they were paying on their dime. They're charging us indirectly, but to get 'em out to those warehouses to get 'em closer to the customer. And then they cited this last year like this is stupid. We need to regionalize this and do the hub and spoke system. So they broke it down into eight regions. So Amazon now has eight core regions in the United States where everything in that region is serviced by that region. And so they really don't want to show you something for sale if it's not in stock in that region because it's going to cost them more to get it to you and it's going to take longer. And so if you're not in stock, I

Brett:

Think another important point just to note there, Kevin. One, the operational efficiency and really nobody understands logistics like Amazon, but they also know that if they can show a customer, Hey, you get this tomorrow or you get this within however many hours that increases conversion rate purchases go up, the shorter the time lag is between clicking and buying and getting the product the more people buy. So showing people what's local increases conversions.

Kevin:

Case in points, last night it was 10 30 at night and I was doing some sort of a little project. I needed some black cardboard stock to put behind this little picture. I go on Amazon and it shows me a bunch of stuff, and this was on a Tuesday and it says a lot of it'll be delivered on Thursday or Friday. I'm like, no, no, I want the stuff that's going to be here in the morning. It's 10 30 at night. And so I click on the filter, it says, next day delivery, show me only the results for next day delivery and it filters it down to 200 instead of 600 or whatever. And it showed up hour at 10 30 at night. It showed up at 8 45 this morning. That's crazy. It's local and Amazon knows that. And so they went to this system where now when you ship to Amazon FBA, they're asking you to do ideal situations five or more locations because they want you to share some of that cost and spread it out, otherwise they charge you a fee. In a lot of cases, they're moving more and more towards this where they don't show results if it's not local. Your results when you type in black cardboard paper in

Brett:

Missouri,

Kevin:

Missouri may be different than mine. And so knowing that it's going to influence your rank, and if you use some of the tools that your ranks heating 10 other software tools, monitor your rank, you might see different results than what I see because based on your IP address. So there's ways to influence that though. Just like in retail, if I'm going into a Walmart and trying to get into a Walmart store, let's say in retail, Walmart takes my product and says, we're going to test you, Kevin, in a hundred stores before we roll you out to all 4,000 of our stores, we're going to test you in a hundred in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida and see how it goes. Well, I want to list those stores because I'm going to go onto Facebook or somewhere and I'm going to target those cities and run ads from my product and say, Hey, my construction paper is now available in Target in Huntsville, Alabama.

Go pick some up, send me a picture of it and we'll send you a free gift or whatever so that people are going in buying it. Then the executives in Little Rock, not Little Rock in Arkansas, in Bentonville, Bentonville, Bentonville are looking at it and going, holy cow, this stuff is actually moving. Kevin is doing good. We're going to roll you out to a hundred more stores. You gave 'em the system that way. The same thing you can do on Amazon, so you can influence, you can't really dictate where you ship your products, Amazon let you say. Well, you can use tools like Helium 10, and there's other ones, smart Scout and some others. They'll show you heat maps and they'll say, if they take a look at, they tie it to the A PA of Amazon, they take a look at the backend and they say, this is where your distribution is. So Amazon may say you have a thousand units in stock. Well, these heat maps will show you exactly which warehouses Amazon has 'em in based on the API. Interesting.

And then you could target, you can say, oh, shoot, looks like Minneapolis. I'm a little bit low on, I'm not ranking very well on, and I know I'm selling well everywhere else, but for whatever reason, Amazon hasn't sent enough or they can't keep enough in stock in Minneapolis, let me influence that. But I can't go in and say, I want to ship to Minneapolis. Amazon dictates that. So I go in and influence Amazon's algorithm the other way I go and use Pinterest ads where you can actually geotarget or use DSP on Amazon where you can you geotarget and coming soon to sponsor ads. I think it's in a beta invitation only now you'll be able to geotarget your Amazon ads. And so to actually influence that. So that's coming and it's pretty sophisticated and it's what a lot of sellers are not aware of it and how it's affecting them. They've been testing it, playing with it for a while. So this is nothing like groundbreaking, just didn't announce last week, but it's becoming more and more and more of a factor as Amazon gets their systems dialed in.

Brett:

Yeah, this is really exciting to me because I think a lot of people are just thinking about Amazon as where do I rank on Amazon or how do I show up organically or in paid on Amazon? But there is no such thing as just how do you appear on Amazon? How do I appear to unique users in geographic areas and where are there opportunities? And while you can't dictate exactly where Amazon stores some of your stuff, you can't influence sales in Minneapolis and you increase the velocity of sales, they're going to get more product there that's going to make things work better. Now, what I was also looking at, Kevin, as I was reading your newsletter is so Amazon wants to show stuff that's close. So I'm in Missouri, so whatever region we are in that I can get stuff in the next day or two, that's what I'm going to see first. But they're also looking at what is selling in my region. They're also looking at what's popular, what's moving in my region because, and I remember reading this as well where Amazon knows that, hey, north Face sells really well on the East coast. Patagonia sells better on the west coast. I'm kind of making some of that up, but that's true. There are different brand preferences or product preferences in different geographic regions, so they're going to show they're going to rank things differently based on what's selling in a region.

Kevin:

Yeah, exactly. And some of that's where you may get shoved out by Amazon, so that's where you use the outside traffic tools like Pinterest and some DSP and other stuff to actually influence Amazon. So now they think you're selling well in that region, and so that actually bumps you up on the list. It bumps you up in the rankings.

Yeah,

But Amazon, I dunno if you've ever done this, but it's amazing the amount of data Amazon has on us as buyers. Have you ever asked for your report from Amazon?

Brett:

I never have. We use Quicken, and so I can just look at my purchases on Amazon. I'm always like, I cannot believe how much money we give to Jeff Bezos every year. It's an astonishing amount, but no, how do you get the data on your,

Kevin:

There's a link. A link. You could probably Google this. I can't remember off the top of my head. It's an Amazon official link. It's for buyers. I'm not talking about for sellers. There may be a version for sellers, but for buyers.

Brett:

So you can see your buying history on Amazon.

Kevin:

Oh, it's way beyond that. No, it will blow your mind. So I did it for me. If you want to do this, just Google, it's free Google, Amazon buyer history, download PDF or something, you'll probably find the link. You'll have to log into your buyer account and then it'll take you to a page and you click a button and it will spit out a PDF. It takes it, it is got to pull it from this Oracle databases and whatever. So it takes it a few hours. You'll get an email link to this PDF. Mine went back to 2000, I'm sorry, 1999. First time I used Amazon and it was 742 pages. But it's not just what I bought. You would think, okay, yeah, of course they know Kevin. Of course they know everything I bought. I could look at my Quicken and I can tell you the same thing. No, it's everything I've ever watched on Amazon Prime, how much of it I watched, where I stopped, where I paused, how long I paused the fonts. Every computer I've ever used the IP address, I've, every computer I've ever used, it's the screen resolution of every computer I've ever used. It's everything I've ever hads a wishlist and taken out. It's every link I've ever shared. It's every address I've ever used. It's every game I've ever played on. Its every video I've ever watched on.

Brett:

I'm sure this is released now due to privacy issues. Amazon's maybe

Kevin:

Forced release years, but they don't publicize it. They don't want you to know it. It's scary. They know everything. And we talk about AI and LLMs and stuff. They got their own LLM right there. They know everything about.

Brett:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Kevin:

And

Brett:

I think you could maybe argue that Google has just as much or more data on what we look for and what we like online, but I don't know that anybody has more data on what we buy. And plus the combination of all those other things like Amazon, the amount of Amazon data that they have is unreal. And I think it's a large part of the reason why they've become the number three online ad platform, right? Leaning into some of that data creates great advertising opportunities as

Kevin:

Well. Well, you look at too, I mean one of the things I say right now is take it beyond just though those TikTok, I always say if you want to know somebody, ask 'em Can I borrow my can borrow your phone for a few minutes, roll our TikTok

Brett:

Feed TikTok know

Kevin:

You for sure, and you'll know everything about that person, what they're into, what they're currently watching just based on that feed. It's so good. It's scary what the data that's out there and there is no such thing as privacy in the United States.

Brett:

That is a really good point. Really good point. Yeah. Privacy is kind of an illusion I believe. Speaking of illusions, as we look at what are some of the myths around geo rank, which I think maybe we talked about, but how do we influence that? How do we influence that in a greater way so we can see maybe where we're not selling as well regions, we run ads around dsp, we around YouTube or on Facebook, whatever to try to get the sell through in those areas. Exactly. What else can we do to influence

Kevin:

That? That's the major thing right there is running that outside traffic in those weakened areas to actually influence that. That's basically where you can try to help influence it. Right now that's pretty much all you can truly do right now.

Brett:

Totally makes sense. But it also makes sense that, hey, if we're looking at Helium 10 and we see what our ranking is, that's kind of just a nationwide number or that's wherever. Actually maybe it'd be better to clarify that wherever

Kevin:

Pull it from,

Brett:

It's wherever it's pulling, it's wherever it's being pulled from.

Kevin:

Wherever their server, wherever their D-P-N-D-P-N pull it from.

Brett:

Got it. Okay. So then how do we get that region level data? That's where we look at Helium 10 and kind of look at those heat

Kevin:

Map there tools out there that will actually let you choose by region, ranking by region, and they're using vpn, so they're using a VPNs or not VPNs. They could be using actual physical servers and different locations and I think that's coming to Helium 10 where you can actually see the eight different regions and it'll break it down. Nice. Okay, cool. Regions.

Brett:

So love that. I think that's going to be news to a lot of people. Geo rank, you don't rank the same way in all regions across the us. It varies based on a number of factors. Talk to me about Cosmo. Cosmo's also a unique thing, new-ish thing on Amazon that influences search results and impacts both sellers and buyers. But what is Cosmo?

Kevin:

Cosmo is Amazon's AI engine that interprets your listing basically. So Cosmo is built, it's hosted on AWS, there's several components to it. Amazon comprehend is one of them. Amazon Comprehend will take a look at your listing and we'll comprehend what is this listing really about? Because us as sellers, we use the tools and we try to influence what Amazon, what we think our product is, but Amazon's like, yeah, Kevin, you can say it's your product's the best or it does this or this or this, but reality is what the customers say or what do we think or how are you wording this in such a way? So Cosmo takes a look at that and it analyzes the sentient, it analyzes the customer reviews to see what they're actually saying and analyzes your pictures. So it actually goes in and analyzes pictures. One of the examples I give is if your Amazon listing, let's say you're selling beach umbrellas and that's your listing and you got a bunch of pictures in your stack of different umbrellas, but one of the pictures doesn't show it actually on the beach, physically on the beach. Maybe it's people holding it, maybe it's the walking with it. And maybe you also are trying to get other spies on this beach umbrella. So you want people to buy a rain umbrella and other stuff. So you are not concentrating just on the word beach, but there's no pictures of the word beach. So Amazon sees that in the image stack. There's no beach pictures here. We're not going to serve this up, but we're going to deprioritize this and show it. You

Brett:

Say it's a beach product, we don't see it as a beach product based on your product images. So no go.

Kevin:

So we're going to put it down even though you're running ads on it and maybe getting some conversions. Alright, we'll give you a little bit of love for that and raise you up a little bit in the A nine, but we're not going to ranking you fully on it. So they're analyzing that. And I did a test, there's a tool luva org I think it was that you could upload a picture and I have the AI analyze this picture and tell me what it is. I took my cell phone and on the back of my cell phone I had a little case. Okay, so it's an old guy. I had reading glasses, so it's like little fold out reading glasses and I pull 'em out. And so I took a picture of my phone on the ground with the little reading glasses just kind of sticking out to the side and I put it in. I said, what is this? And it misinterpreted it and misinterpreted the image as a mobile device, a mobile phone with a key chain. It's not a key chain, it's a little eyeglasses that sit on your nose. Interesting.

Brett:

Sure,

Kevin:

I got to sit on your nose. And so then I took the picture and I rearranged the eyeglasses, took it out from underneath half of it underneath and positioned it differently. It got it right.

Brett:

Yeah, because they thought the glasses were connected to the iPhone.

Kevin:

So those kinds of things are now that's part of Cosmo. It's called Amazon recognition.

Brett:

Yeah, interesting.

Kevin:

And Amazon, you can go to AWS and type in Amazon recognition, upload photos and Amazon will spit back what they think it is.

But

They're using that to now analyze and try to determine patterns and what you're really selling and what the customer's really looking for. What's the actually intent or the buyer. And I think it's going to get to the point where in the not too distant future where it's not going to be keyword searches anymore as much Amazon will never get away from that. There's going to be some people that do it,

But they're just going to get more intent based. It's going to be where I type in, I'm taking a trip to, it's going to be more prompting. I'm taking a trip to Clearwater, Florida with my family. What do I need? What do I need? Amazon, we just talked about this 742 page PDF. They know everything I've bought. They know that maybe I don't have children, but let's just say I had children. Maybe they know that I have an overweights 12-year-old because I've been buying larger size kids' clothes or something for a 12-year-old. They know that my wife has a sense of sensitivity. She's always buying these creams of some sort for skin skin. So it's going to then suggest, in my suggestions, it's going to then suggest, oh, you're going to Clearwater, Florida. When are you going? And maybe ask a question or two qualifying question, oh, I'm going July 3rd.

Okay, July 3rd to the 10th, the weather's going to be this and this and this. Alright, here's what you need. You already have a beach chair. We're not going to show you any beach chairs. Or maybe we're going to show you one you bought one four years ago and you need to upgrade. Here's the new version. And it's going to show you, oh, you need this S SPF 50 for the wife, you need this for the kid extra wide chair for the kid beach chair. You need this, this and this and you need a beach umbrella. Let's just throw it in. Whatever. And that's the type of stuff. I think you're going to start seeing more intent-based results rather than keyword based results.

Brett:

Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. And I think in the near term or even now with Cosmo, we have to understand what does the AI think about my listing? What does the AI think about my pictures? And it's no longer just keyword stuffing and gaming the algorithm.

Kevin:

You got to sell to the ai.

Brett:

Yeah, you got to sell to the ai. And I think there's still good overlap between the two, the things that

Kevin:

Are working. So defense right now, right now it's still you got to do the old way. If you quit doing the old way, you're going to shoot yourself in the foot. But the new way is coming and it's coming. I don't know how long it's going to be. Rufuss is the test of this, so Rufus, the next, it's taking the Cosmo data and let's put it in a set of a technical way, let's it in a way that the average user can interact with. And Rufuss is only on mobile right now and it's a little rough around the edges, but just so was the first iPod, so was the first iPod. So they'll get this dialed in. But that rufuss taking the Cosmo data and taking your history and taking what it knows about you and trying to suggest, and I'm not the expert on Rufuss, but my friend Vanessa Hung, has figured out ways to actually influence that on the backend.

And a lot of that is by making sure that you're not just keyword stuffing, like you said, that you're actually talking situational things and putting situational stuff and filling in all those backend little fields that a lot of us skip some of the simple things of fabric and color and whatever. But being very complete and thorough and actually giving thought to exactly what's in your images, not just the pretty images, but actually images that'll convert, but also giving thought to what's the AI going to think of this? And then you take that a step further. I have not played with this yet. It just came out. I have a story coming in my newsletter about it, so I'll be playing with it tonight actually. But Perplexity just introduced shopping and a lot of people that have been playing with it have been saying it's better than rufuss.

Interesting.

It ties into Amazon. So actually it's a better tool to get results on Amazon than Rufuss itself and it's shopping and they did it just in time for right before Black Friday and Cyber Monday that we just had. So they did just in time for that. And they're saying this is the next evolution of shopping and it's not just going to Amazon, it's going all over the web and picking stuff. Google's doing some stuff with the Google lens.

Totally.

They're doing, there's a ton of that kind of stuff coming and you're going to see this evolving and becoming more and more and more. It's a shift in the way you search. So I don't know how the adoption rate will be 3D movies. Were supposed to be the next hot thing 10 years ago and everybody was buying 3D projectors and getting little glasses and that didn't take off. So maybe it doesn't take off, but I think this is going to take off and this is where the future's going to

Brett:

Be. Absolutely. I think exactly what the flavor is or is it rufuss or something else, but this is going to be the future for sure. I think the thing we had to think about now is we always used to talk about SEO. We still do, it's still relevant, but SEO for Google, SEO for Amazon. But now we're also optimizing for the ai, right? Because I do think the way most users are going to interact with platforms, the web in general, but also Amazon and other places to shop, is going to be kind of with an AI assistant. I would love to get your take on Rufuss and how popular you think it's going to be. But I watched my 7-year-old son, he used my iPhone. He was shopping for, he wanted to get this toy from the movie cars and this tractor trailer thing, and I didn't tell him to do this. He saw the rufuss thing, he clicked on it and he started asking it questions, how big is this? Will this fit? Can I drive the car into the trailer? Stuff like that. And I was like, that's really interesting, but that's probably the way we're going to interact with the shopping platforms

Kevin:

And that's how you guys start doing your backend is figuring out what are those questions When you launch a new product,

It's focus groups, it's knowing your customer and it's going to get to the point where right in the past we've been able to control our destination in a way by controlling the keywords, look for the opportunities, look for someone where someone else is not optimizing on these keywords or only three people are, and there's a lot of depth. I can just go fill in the gap or I can beat this guy, I got a better price or more reviews or whatever that control that we've had is going to start going away. And the control now is on the ai and you got to start selling to an avatar. You got to truly know your customer and truly become a true brand, a brand's, not a logo and a name, but a true brand and actually know your avatar and know what are the questions that a 7-year-old is going to ask. That's our audience.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so powerful, and this is something we've been speaking about for a long time, I know you have too, is that long-term success on Amazon, it's building a brand, not just selling products, right, selling products. Anybody can do that. That's going to come and go, but building a brand that's about really understanding who are you serving? So what's your positioning for your brand and what problems are you solving and having that clear avatar picture and then understanding what are the use cases, where are the questions, where are the problems, what are the things someone needs to know and how will they interact with the ai? So I can bring that to the surface or allow the AI to bring that to the surface. Really powerful and it's a different way of looking at it.

Kevin:

One of the things I teach in one of our most recent presentations I just did in Singapore, and I'm doing it on a webinar soon is it's on the psychology of marketing. I'm known for lots of hacks and stuff, and teaching hacks and hacks can be great and can get you out the bind, but like you said, it's not long term,

But the psychology of marketing, your 7-year-old, the way he's approaching things is the same as you and I did 30 years ago when you were seven and I was 57. No, I'm just kidding. It's the same. It's just different technology and different ways of doing it. So if you understand the underlying psychology, and so I did a presentation called the psychology of marketing and how to do it on product sales. And one of the things that's, I heard this actually on my first million podcast, a guy named George Mack, really brilliant advertising guy out of the uk. He said that you should actually do the advert before you choose the product. So not the other way around. Right now we choose the product based on all these tools and then we create advertising around and say, no, it needs to be first. What is the problem? Then go figure out how you're going to sell the problem. And in two seconds or less, you need to actually, they need to say, that's me. Not two seconds to stop the scroll with some sort of crazy waving or crazy flashing or whatever, but two seconds, they look at it in two seconds when his words or when they're scrolling, they don't give an F about you and they're like, oh, what's that? Oh,

Add that ad is me. That's my situation, that's my problem, that's my solution. Two seconds and then what's the product that fixes that solves that. A perfect example of that is of doing this is the baby changers. So you go into the airports when people travel this last Thanksgiving, everybody's out traveling, you're traveling with a baby, sometimes you need to change the diaper, so in the old days you'd find a place to do it and then now a lot of us have seen those little things. There's a little diaper changing station, the little thing that folds out of the wall. Yeah, totally makes like a little table. Well, the people that were manufacturing that 15, 20 years ago, were trying to sell that to airport facilities managers or whoever manages the stuff in the airport and they were putting this out and putting out pretty pictures with the thing, how it folds out and folds back up of happy families, mom, dad, kid all sitting there smiling, holding a happy baby that's not crying, and that was their ads that they're using in their brochures, in their marketing, and they sold something like a little less than a million bucks, maybe $800,000 worth of these things.

They then changed the marketing to a single picture and the single picture was a bathroom stall, dirtiest all get out with toilet torn toilet paper on the floor, a little bit of pee on the toilet, and a woman leaned over with a baby on the ground trying to change the diaper, the only big space that she had, and they put a tagline tag, it's

Brett:

Horrifying, right? It's horrifying. We got to change this.

Kevin:

Sales went to 800 million.

Brett:

Wow.

Kevin:

That's what I'm talking about is when you guys start thinking about it in those terms, it's problem solution, and that's how you move along.

Brett:

I think that's why Amazon, before they launch a new feature, before they launch a new initiative, what they do internally is they start with a press release. They start with what's the press release? Same thing. What's the ad going to be for this feature? How is the customer going to benefit from this? Should we even do this?

Kevin:

Yep, that's a good point. That's exactly the way Amazon does it, is start from the end and work backwards and I think somebody goes start the other way around in the Amazon world. Another thing you're talking about, an AI that I'm testing right now, that's just scary. We're talking about privacy and how much Amazon knows about you and there's no privacy in the US is I'm doing two things right now. There's a fellow that I'm testing this with for my newsletter. I've been running newsletter ads on Facebook and doing lookalike audiences to my list. It's doing all right, but there's a guy that came to me and said, look, I have an AI tool that combined with a couple other things that we're doing. I can find out anybody that's searching on Google, so if anything that's typed into the Google search bar, I can create custom audiences of that without them even knowing. I'm like, how are you doing that? I said, don't worry about it. We got it figured out. I'm like, okay. So I said, I'm game. I'll try it. So you can say that if I want, I'll test it for my newsletter. So I want people that are Amazon sellers, 7, 8, 9 figure sellers. So what would they be typing into the Google search bar? They'd be typing in Amazon seller support, Amazon seller central

Tips for DSP or something. They're not going to be typing in, how do I sell on Amazon? That's a new person. I want the experienced people. So I gave him a list of keywords and he went back out and pulled a two week run of trailing report of 484,000 people that supposedly fit that audience profile. He then imported that automatically into meta into a custom audience in the meta, and I'm testing it right now. We started five days ago and it looks like it's freaking working. We're doing lookalike on it and we're doing direct to them raw. It looks like it's actually working pretty damn well. And then he's able to take that information as four 84,000, overlay it with Apollo and some other stuff, and give me this spreadsheet that's got their physical address, their LinkedIn profile, their all this other data, their age, all kinds of other crazy stuff. And so I'm like, holy cow, you could do this across all kinds of platforms for all kinds of products and dial in better than what Facebook is dialing in. Is it still early? Give me another couple weeks and

Brett:

Totally. Yeah. Yeah,

Kevin:

This may, but if this works, my company, dragon Fish that I mentioned earlier, we're going to be offering this up. I'm not going to get that source out right now, but there's another fellow I just met in Montreal this last weekend. I was up there on some other business and we met with him and he's doing personalized stuff with AI right now. So where I can give, set up a landing page, enter my email address, you could take it a few steps further and ask a few questions if you want to. Levesque is ask method, all knowledge, ask two or three questions, makes it better, but just with an email address instantly, he can actually go out and figure out who I am. He reads all my social media, he reads any blog post I've ever posted, anything that's out there on the internet reads everything about me, and they can customize the next page to make.

The next page says, let's say, Hey Kevin, since you're a Texas a and l, Maggie's football fan and the big game is coming up Saturday, he know I posted about something. You might be interested in X, Y, or Z, or I'm an Aggie too or whatever. He can customize it and do you this with emails, set up an email sequence that customizes each email take. I did a test with him and took my, I just gave him the URL, my website, billion dollar sellers, and he sending me a five part email series as a test, and it's freaking dialed in. It looks like this guy researched me crazy. It's powerful. And he says it's in beta and the people that are using are seeing ridiculous conversion rates. And he just did it with, he's going to do a press release. He did a press release. I was trying to get press, sorry for somebody, and rather than just buying a press release, he went out and had the AI pull all the reporters that have ever written about, I'm just going to make this up a slow feed dog bowl,

And

Here's all these reporters that put in gadget and gizmo and whatever ever spoken about a SFI dog bowl and find their email address usually on their byline or find their contact or using Apollo. And then he told it, go read all the articles every one of these reporters have ever written, and he read all the articles and then it created a custom message to every single reporter that said, Hey, Brett, great job running for the Washington Post. That article you wrote on X, Y, and Z on the dogs was amazing. It really did this and this and the other article you wrote about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And in this one, did you know that we have this new dog bowl that does x, y, z? Because you said that was a problem you'd like to see in this other article you wrote, we'd love to send you one if you want to take a review of it.

The person gets that like, holy cow, this person researched me. He does all this in a matter of 15 seconds, 30 seconds that that's where we're going to in marketing. It's this power. I'm about to test it with postcards or it's custom postcards to every single person. So if I'm selling hiking boots and I know that I get you to come to my website and I can even use retention.com or DA app, or not even have you enter email address and probably match up 50% of you, I could then, Brett, you come across my website, I'm going to know exactly what you're into because I'm going to immediately use Daaz app. Oh, there's his email address, Brett omg.com, dot com or whatever it is. And then, oh, here's all the posts he's made. Oh, he mentioned, he may have mentioned that he's going to take a trip soon with his family and go climb out to Kilimanjaro in Africa. Let me send him a postcard, drop a postcard in the mail, not a Facebook ad because postcard marketing still works very, very well. I'm going to send a postcard in the mail automatically that's cut the coast hardest custom printed by companies that do this. It's tailored to him. It has a picture of Mount Kilimanjaro, has a picture of my boots, and it has something to the effect of, I'm not going to say I know that you're going there, that would freak you out, but I'm going to say that

Brett:

Little too creepy. Yeah,

Kevin:

Not too creepy. But I'm going to say something to the effect that, hey, as an avid hiker that's concerned about the quality of the seat and wants to be able to hike an extra three hours a day without sore feet, our boots are the best boots. People have them from Mount Kilimanjaro to Everest and beyond, and they're great, and you're like, holy shit, I'm going to freaking Kilimanjaro. That's

Brett:

Crazy.

Kevin:

The boots I need, that's where it's going to get to. And that's

Brett:

Where, yeah, and I think really what AI is allowing is all the little things that would take hours of research or an unthinkable amount of time to actually execute on. It's allowing it at scale, right? It's allowing these customizable messages and direct outreach and building audiences and all these things that we'd love to do, but you either need a massive team of people to do or just can't do in general. AI is making that possible, for sure. Good. Any other perspectives on Rufuss or Cosmo or what we need to do as sellers to really take advantage of those?

Kevin:

The biggest read my newsletter, of course, billion Dollar Seller, there's always tips and strategies and tools in there, but beyond that is really thinking about selling to a customer, not to a keyword, selling to the AI and doing enough testing to know what are people asking? Looking right now, you may not know you're launching a new product. I don't know if my 7-year-old is going to ask, does the firetruck fit through whatever you said your son was asking? I don't know that, but maybe they've been asking that question and some of the other similar products or other similar toys. So analyze those reviews and see what people are asking. Look at the q and a section

And analyze that. Go to Reddit. Reddit's a massive tool right now, and Reddit has exploded in popularity. It's been around 20 some odd years, just went public, but Google put a bunch of money into it, and when Google put the a hundred million or whatever it was investment into it, they actually boosted it and its ramping. So Google, Reddit is exploding, but there's a lot of tools that will monitor Reddit threads, and there's a lot of good discussion that goes on in these threads of pain points and of issues that people are looking for beyond just what you see on e-commerce platforms. And sometimes you can get some really good insight off of that. So taking that kind of data and then structuring it in a way like, okay, what am I really going to focus on here? Maybe it's too massive to try to include everything, but what am I going to really focus on here? Maybe you create three different versions of your product, and each version is slightly different packaging, slightly different color or whatever,

Brett:

Just bit, right? Built specifically for an avatar,

Kevin:

Built specifically for an avatar, and that's where you got to go.

Brett:

Yeah, this is the headache pill. This is the low back pain pill. This is the soreness pill. Maybe all the same active ingredient, just slightly different, but different products. Position.

Kevin:

Ty Tylenol does that. Totally ol migraine Tylenol, this Tylenol ex. You look at the

Brett:

Ingredient, the main active ingredients, the same. There's some other things added, but yeah,

Kevin:

Yeah, exactly. Same

Brett:

Thing. Yeah. And so I think, man, I love the points you made there where hey, build the product for a customer, not for a keyword. Think about that avatar, build a real brand. The AI is going to be able to uncover that, optimize so that the AI can uncover what's going to be most important to your shoppers. Think about how to really influence rank, not just on a national level because that doesn't really exist, but think about those geo rank opportunities. Love that. And of course, subscribe to Kevin's newsletter, the Billion Dollar Seller newsletter. I'll link to all of that in the show notes. But Kevin, how else can people connect with you? So if people are like, man, I need more Kevin King in my life, I need to attend some of these events, or

Kevin:

I don't want that. It might be dangerous for your health, dangerous for your wallet, but dangerous for your wallet. But no, I mean, I'm on LinkedIn. Just a year ago, August of last year, I got on LinkedIn for the first time I was ignoring LinkedIn and it's growing pretty good. So I post on LinkedIn, so that's a good way to reach out. Just Kevin King or billion dollar sellers.com is my newsletter. It's free every Monday and Thursday of action. It's not a marketing email. It's a lot of actionable tips and strategies and news about what's going on in the world and tactics and the latest in the software side and everything. So those are the two best ways probably.

Brett:

Awesome. Check it out. Kevin King, ladies and gentlemen, Kevin, this has been awesome. Can't wait to schedule round two. I will not wait another 300 episodes. It will be much, much sooner.

Kevin:

Awesome. I appreciate it. It's been fun. Thanks for having me on, Brett.

Brett:

Absolutely. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear more from you. Give us the feedback on the podcast. Leave us a review on iTunes if you've not done so already. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

In this tactical episode, OMG Commerce's Email Director Nick Flint reveals game-changing strategies to maximize what should be your most profitable customer acquisition and retention channel. With rising costs across advertising, shipping, and operations, Nick shares how leading brands are using email and SMS marketing to protect and grow their margins in 2025. Whether you're doing $2M or $50M in revenue, these practical insights will help you unlock more revenue from your existing customer base.

‍

Key takeaways:

• Why getting organized across marketing channels is critical for scale – and the simple tools Nick recommends to coordinate email, SMS, social, and paid media for maximum impact
• How to design "bigger A/B tests" that drive real insights (including one test that recently doubled campaign revenue for a client)
• The counterintuitive reason why adding friction to your email-to-purchase journey could significantly boost conversions
• Why SMS is becoming increasingly crucial as email deliverability tightens, and the exact tactics to build your SMS list without annoying customers

‍

Plus, Nick shares his unconventional "cat keyboard" subject line test that generated unprecedented engagement for a pet brand. Don't miss the bonus segments on advanced segmentation strategies and mobile-first optimization techniques that could unlock hidden revenue in your business.

---

Chapters

(00:00) Introduction

(05:09) Organizing Your Email & SMS Strategy 

(11:01) Implementing Bigger A/B Tests

(17:59) Being Unique in Your Brand Messaging

(22:14) Leveraging SMS for Enhanced Engagement

(26:20) Bonus Tips for Doubling Email Results

(27:40) Conclusion

---

Show Notes:

• Russ Henneberry
• AI Marketing Mastery with Russ Henneberry 
• Ultimate Email Marketing Testing Checklist

---

Connect With Brett: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/ 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce 
• Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/ 

---

Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, Trevor Crump, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Bryan Porter and more.

---

Transcript:

Nick:

As we add it and it gets more popular, more and more people are taking us up on those SMS offers.

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today we're talking about four ways maybe going to sneak in a couple of bonus ways if we can for how to get the most from what should be your most profitable, most effective channel for acquiring new customers, but also increasing repeat purchases, increasing lifetime value. We're talking about retention, marketing, email plus SMS. I have our resonant expert, our eight year veteran. This guy has been in the D two C space in email marketing space for eight, count him eight years. That is not an old joke. You can tell by looking at him, dude, as young and fit and spry, but he is been at the game a while and so welcome back to the pod email director for om g commerce. Nick Flint. What's up Nick? How you doing?

Nick:

What's up Brett? So apparently established is the new old, since he said eight years, you're pretty established.

Brett:

Established is the new old. But hey, there's only one of us on this call has a little gray, their facial hair and that would not be you. So, but yes, you are established, seasoned, all of that good stuff. Now, before we dive in to these four ways to smash your results or get more profitable, get more effective with your retention marketing in 2025, you just completed something that a lot of people aspire to and this is not your first rodeo, but you just completed a marathon, but not just any old marathon. Nick, where did you run a marathon?

Nick:

That was in the beautiful New York City. Turns out

Brett:

The big apple,

Nick:

Now it's the biggest marathon in the world. So I don't know where I'm supposed to go from here. The biggest am best over 50,000 people. So I got to figure out which one to pick next

Brett:

50,000 people. Do you know where you finished? And it's okay if you don't want to reveal this or where did you finish in that roster of 50,000 people?

Nick:

I think in the late 20 thousands. So maybe 20, 26, 27, 8,000 we're up

Brett:

There. Very respectable and I believe, and you and I were actually just in New York recently had a leadership offsite there, meeting with some partners and with our leadership team. So we were kind of hanging out in NYC, which was a good time. And you revealed to me one of your fastest miles was mile 26, which is crazy. So you saved enough energy to really bust it that final mile. Tell us about that.

Nick:

Yeah, so I have this little TikTok series going on where I do a mile doing different things. So a mile with a weight vest on a mile, pushing a truck a mile while juggling. And one of the ones I haven't done yet is how long does it take to run a mile after running 25 miles? So when that 25 kicked in, I had to book it and get a nice video at the same time. It hurt.

Brett:

That's amazing. So anything for TikTok or the grim, but that final mile after running 25 miles, your 26 mile was like eight minutes, right?

Nick:

Low eight, yeah, it was a tough low eight for sure.

Brett:

Dang. Pretty good, man. Pretty good. So hey, I think you could compare e-commerce and especially if you look at our fiscal year of e-commerce, it's a bit of a marathon and every mile every month is a little bit different. We got to approach it a little bit differently. And so as we're recording this, we're kind in the home stretch of 2024, so we're wanting to maximize what we're doing now, but really our eyes are also on 2025. So let's dive in, Nick, we got four ways to make this the best year yet with your retention marketing. Let's talk about way number one

Nick:

Today we're going to talk about doubling your email and SMS revenue in 2025. This channel is still alive and well, you just got to know how to use it, right? I know you're price spending more on ads than ever before. You're probably spending more on shipping than ever before. You're probably paying your employees more than ever before. So let's go ahead and maximize this to help bring some of that profit margin back into your business.

Brett:

And I think it's really important to note, and that can be a little bit depressing, Nick, if we look at, hey, you're paying more frauds in your before, more for shipping and cost of goods, more for your team, but that's the way business goes, right? It's never going to get cheaper in most cases for most of your business. And so email can be a great adjuster, it can be just a very effective lever to pull to dial up your profits and your business. And I think a lot of brands are just missing out on all the opportunity that's in front of them as it pertains to email.

Nick:

The last leg of that was you should be charging more than you've ever charged before. So toss that on top of everything else. So get those margins back by up and those prices on the site. Absolutely.

First thing you got to do before anything else is just get organized within your business. You want to make sure email and SMS tie in with everything seamlessly. And a couple of ways to do this, the main one is getting a content calendar laid out. You can use notion, you can use Google Calendar, you can use Google Sheet, you can use pen and paper, whatever works for you, but just make sure you have a full picture of everything that's about to happen within your brand. Blog posts, social media posts, product launches, any new ad initiatives. I think of those email and SMS is tied in as well.

Brett:

Yeah. And where do you think most brands fall short here? So you've got a unique perspective, Nick. You audit dozens of Klaviyo accounts every year for some pretty big brands that we talk to. And what are some of issues or the misses that you see when you're auditing accounts as it pertains to being organized?

Nick:

They stay too siloed. The different marketing efforts that a brand could be doing. Sometimes if it's an owner running their own business doing everything, they have all that tracked in their head and they don't necessarily have to have this set up. But the more complex your brand is, you have someone running Facebook, someone running email, someone running your website. You got to make sure everyone's communicating with each other to make sure everyone's aligned and on the same page. And the next thing is getting ahead of the game. A lot of things seem to be very last minute for the brands that I audit, it's like, Hey, this is going out tomorrow. I'm going to get it done tomorrow morning. So it's ready to go, which the more of a heads up that you can give yourself and more of a headstart, the more seamless it'll be when something actually goes live.

Brett:

Yeah, it's really important to note that the structures in the systems and the marketing calendars you had in place at $2 million in revenue are not the same as when you're $10 million in revenue. And the structure you have in place when you're 10 million in revenue is not the same as what you'll need when you're 50 million in revenue or beyond. And I think it's really important to note that this is not just about working smarter, right? We don't work five times harder to go from two to 10 million or 10 times harder than that to go to a hundred million. It's more about getting the right systems, the right communication processes in place, maybe partnering with the right agencies. Quick plug to Nick Flynn and the email team. But yeah, it's about getting organized because this cannot just live in your head as the entrepreneur operator. You got to get your teams in sync.

And yeah, we definitely see this. We have a unique perspective because running Google and YouTube and running Amazon, running email for a lot of brands. And so we see the need to coordinate even within our teams, but a lot of brands are missing that. So any practical tips there? I know you laid out a couple of tools and I know your perspective. My perspective is tools are just tools. Whatever you use, whatever works for you is the best tool. But any tips or tricks to make those tools effective or to make marketing calendars a reality,

Nick:

Start easy. Start with Google Sheets, get that free version up and running before you go into some complex page software. Utilize that free one. You can get a simple dashboard set up and the perfect example would be, we're diving into black Friday this week, so let's pretend you sent out an email saying 20% offsite wide, come and get it. They go to your website, they enter the code hopefully and they check out. But now imagine if your website had the banner that said 20% off the product page is also mentioned that they're posting on social media organically on your stories, getting people to go to the site. And then also your paid ads are also mentioned that 20% off sale, that way if someone's browsing on social, they're going to end up on your site and get reinforced and they're getting the same message across everything. You don't want it to be disjointed.

Brett:

Yes, it's really great where everything is communicating the same thing makes a ton of sense. And so you talk about the calendar, but also KPI tracking and this is something that you do internally for all OMG clients and we can actually look and see all our clients together and see who's really performing, who's lagging, things like that. What are some of the things you recommend getting on that calendar, and then what are the KPIs that you're recommending? We track,

Nick:

Again, keep it simple and straightforward here. Let's say you have eight campaigns lined up for the upcoming month. Those are eight unique emails going out, set up four unique AB tests you want to run for these campaigns. And that way you can use the learning from those for your future campaigns and add that same learning into your flow, all those flows you have up and running. So let's say it's almost unrealistic to keep AB testing every campaign. You got to get some normal ones out there as well just for the sake of the time if it takes a, set them up. So we have four broad tests within those eight campaigns. I just sent out an email today actually showing off one of our recent AB tests and the analogy I used was, if you're a shoe brand and you have a shoe launch coming up, I want some drastic AB tests in here. So I want to have show them the shoe and that variation one of the email V two that your AB testing, don't show them the shoe on one side. Hey, if we show it to them, they're going to like it. They're going to go to the site and buy it on the other side. If you don't show it to them within the email and you make them click through to your website to actually see it, they're getting targeted with a pixel, they're going to hit with all of your flows. Now in the future for all of your future campaigns and the launches for your new shoes, do you want to show it to them or not?

Brett:

Yeah, it's so great. So building in, we can't test everything because done is better than perfect. And if we strive for perfection in everything we do, you're just going to do less stuff and you're going to likely be less effective. So in eight campaigns, yeah, maybe we're running four ab tests. I really like looking at that. We're tracking our KPIs and then that's informing our next round of tests, our next round of campaigns. Super, super smart. Now I believe that kind of leads into one of the next big things to double your results, and that's bigger AB tests, right Nick? So maybe we talk about that next. I think that's a natural tie in to what we just discussed

Nick:

A hundred percent. A lot of times when I'm hopping into accounts and giving some audits, giving some recommendation, as I'm looking through the campaigns or the flows, the AB tests that are set up are two different subject lines that are pretty similar to each other. And the hard part there

Brett:

Is do we want to say big, what's your takeaway at big sale? Or do we want to say huge sale? Let's test big versus huge.

Nick:

And it's like a 0.2% difference. Everything looks the same and you don't actually learn anything from it. So have these broad tests. I'll go back to that shoe example. Within the imagery, should you be showing the shoe by itself? That way you can see the details, you can get a little bit more of an up close look or should you be featuring models wearing the shoes within the emails? Then you can see what it looks like on a person. You can get the outfit inspiration going on, have these broad tests within your campaigns and then transfer that data. I like about three days to pass by to get a fair gauge of enough people have gotten it clicked through and purchased at that point, three days afterwards, pull that data from Klaviyo into your centralized dashboard. That way as you're making your next upcoming campaigns, you can reference all those AB tests from the last one all in one spot. So you can say, okay, what worked in the past and what should I do differently?

Brett:

How do you work through that and determine what should we test or what should we not test? Because there's this old adage, which I think is really false and counterproductive, where it's like you should AB test everything, test everything in your business. And that's just not practical. And I remember the old example in internet marketing 1.0 was like, test the color of your button. Is the green button better or an orange button better? And just see, and that's the kind of stuff they're generally speaking does not yield wins, but how do you decide what to test? I do think in some cases subject line testing does make a lot of sense, but how are you determining, okay, these are the elements that we think are going to move the needle. Let's do an AB test here and let's then get our learnings.

Nick:

So we'll have a broad theory to start with. We'll work with the brand owners, run some different theories or ideas by them, make sure they're on board with it, and then we will run with it from there. And afterwards we'll look at the data to make sure there was enough of a difference between the two of them. For example, for one brand that we just started working with, we had a two x increase on their campaigns. We switched to one test and the test was, and had been using these links on the website that automatically took you to the cart with the product already added to it. So on that logic, hey, let them click on this product, it'll take 'em to the cart automatically and they can easily check out with less clicks. I a hundred percent see the logic there. But instead we took them to the product page to see, hey, how does that compare to taking 'em to the cart?

And that product page brought in twice as much revenue than taking 'em directly to the cart with the yeah, literally a two XI was surprised. It's crazy. And the difference I can see there is the people who haven't brought this product yet, bought this product yet, it's giving 'em a lot more information on that product page. If there's any kind of other callouts like that free shipping threshold of the money back guarantee or the product specs or if there's an upsell process after they add it to the cart. All that was getting skipped by taking 'em directly to checkout.

Brett:

Yeah, it's really great. And then I think part of this Nick is looking at, hey, what are our core metrics and where are we maybe off a little bit? So maybe you look at performance historically and you think click-through rate is a little bit low, right? We're not getting as many people as I would expect to click through on this email. So that's when you look at, well, what if I do something radical and not show them the shoe? What if I just make it all about kind of intrigue or we're just making them curious? And so we're using curiosity as a tactic to get them to click. Or maybe in this case you're looking at it and you're saying, okay, a lot of people are clicking and we've certainly made it convenient for them to check out, but fewer people than I would expect are actually converting. So why are they not converting? Well, they're probably not converting because they're not convinced or because they need more information or because of some of the reasons. So yeah, let's change the page we're sending them to and see if that makes a difference. So I really like that. I think you've got to look at the data from the data form a hypothesis from the hypothesis then or thesis, then you create the AB test and then you take your learnings and you go from there. It's really, really smart.

Nick:

And when you're organized, you can let some of this stuff play out. A lot of the times, if you're last minute and you watch that shoe, you're going to say, shoe's live, come and get it in the subject line. Picture of shoe is here, come and get it. That's you. Don't take you. Exactly. Yeah, you're rushing it. You're trying to get these sales up. So with that curiosity thing that you mentioned, I won't even tell them what we just did. So for the AB test that I sent out an email for earlier today, I said, Hey, this campaign at two x, the client's revenue and this campaign, because we ran a test, if you want to see what that test was apply to me, I'll give you all the juicy details. And that way for all of the potential clients out there, I've now peaked their curiosity. I'm now going to get that conversation started and I can send them a more in-depth breakdown of those details.

Brett:

That's great. And in that case, maybe you'll get fewer people responding than maybe would've just clicked or something. But in this case you're like, let's see if we can get more interactions, let's see if we can get more conversations going. And that was kind of the goal. So really smart. Love that. Any other tips on bigger AB tests before we move on to the next way to double your results?

Nick:

Yeah, this one actually just started using recently. I'm sure a lot of you out there started using AI chat GBT and clog to help with your email campaign creation. And instead of me feeding it the two ideas I wanted to test out like, hey, write this campaign twice, focus on urgency for one and focus on the vegan aspect of our brand for the other. Instead of doing something like that, I would say, give me four unique value props. Write four campaigns for it. And then I kind of picked two that I think could work well. So instead of you coming up with the tests, two tests, use AI to help you with that.

Brett:

Yeah, lean on ai, man. AI should be your primary research assistant test assistant. You should start using it and everything. And quick plug for another episode that I did episode with Russ Henneberry on how to use AI to improve your marketing results. I've already gotten tremendous feedback on that episode, so go back and check that out. So alright, the two ways we've talked about so far to double your email results, one, get organized, two bigger AB tests. What's next?

Nick:

You got to be got to be unique as a brand. Get rid of all the default stuff that you see in Klaviyo. That's the lazy way out and it's not going to have a good impact for your brand. You left this behind how many different brands are using that because the default Klaviyo subject line, get rid of that. You left this behind and really lean into your brand voice as some products are becoming more of a commodity. There's a lot of people selling hats out there, there's a lot of people selling shirts. What can you do to help your brand stand out, lean on your strong suits.

Brett:

Examples there examples of how do you weave personality brand, how do you weave that into your marketing?

Nick:

So within those subject lines, keep them focused on the products that you are selling. If you are a camping brand and instead of your abandoned cart email saying You left this behind every other brand is doing, say going camping soon. Now in the inbox, I'm like, oh yeah, I am going camping soon. That's why I was looking at the tent. I should probably go buy that now so it can be here in time for my trip. Small things like that can help you stand out. You can develop your brand voice, how you're talking to people on social media. You don't have to have a separate voice. I feel like people default to professionalism when it comes to writing emails. I'm not sure why. It'll be fun and goofy and people will engage with them on social. And then when it comes to writing these emails, they kind of just go back to these safe defaults and they're not leaning into it. So figure out what your brand voice is or what you want it to be and make sure it's the same across all the platforms you're promoting yourself on.

Brett:

It's really good advice. I don't know why we sometimes lean into more formal communications when we get into email marketing, but in general it doesn't work, right? You do want that same voice, that same if it's whimsical or fun on social, use that in email. If it's a little bit irreverent and funny in social, use that in email if it's driven and in your face and performance. If you're like a sports brand or something, use that in email. I really like that advice. Don't shift the tone of your messaging just to fit some idea you have about what email marketing should be. You be unique, stand out. Where should someone look? How should they evaluate what's going on in their account to understand, hey, these are the areas where I'm just boilerplate copying what Klaviyo recommends versus where am I being me?

Nick:

So you can check into your flows. I would say look at those first. See what the current flow setup is, and you can look at your history of changes and see what was the original subject line here and what did I end up changing that to? Did I play it safe and stick to it? One of the best campaigns I ever sent out was for a cat brand and the subject line, I just mushed my keyboard and I just smashed my fingers on it. So the subject line made zero sense. When they opened that email, it was, sorry, my cat was walking across while I was trying to type this, but come check out this thing that we just launched. Dude, it's so good. And they got a ton of replies because they're a cat brand, they're fun, they're playful. A lot of the owners appreciated that. And now it makes sense. Stand out.

Brett:

We could all, if you're a cat lover, whichever one on your email list was, they've all had their cat walk across their keyboard that immediately endears them to you. It's like, yes, we're cat owners. That's what happens. And what a fun email and what a bizarre subject line, right? You're looking through your list of subject lines like, hey, just following up and our event next Tuesday and blah blah, blah. And then you just see the string of letters, the string of nonsense that you pretty much have to click on.

Nick:

Yeah, I mushed it and it didn't look random enough, so I had to do a couple to make it look random enough.

Brett:

That is awesome. That is awesome. Okay, cool. So we've got three ways to double our email here. We're getting organized, we're running bigger AB tests, we're being unique to us, we're being our brand. We're not being boilerplate. What's number four?

Nick:

This one might be the most impactful, so maybe we should have started with it. But hey, if you're hanging around this long, then you're in for a treat. The last one here, if you have not leaned into this yet, I strongly recommend that you do in 2025. And I'm talking about SMS as the email providers, the inboxes are getting more and more strict with who they are, letting into that main inbox and not sending to the promo tab even within Klaviyo, they're recommending now you stick to that 30 day engaged audience. It's going to be more and more important to own more of your customer's information, know their email, know their SMS, know their address, get them pixeled on your site too. And SMS is one that you can control because you know that they're going to see the text message whenever it comes through. You're not guaranteed that they're going to see the email when it comes

Brett:

Through.

Nick:

The best way to get started with this, I know it's kind of intimidating. There's new rules and regulations and I don't want to annoy people. There's a lot of pushback that I'll get when I'm recommending this. The best way to get started is adding the SMS signup as an optional step within your pop-up. Instantly. Some people are going to be comfortable with that and give you the number off the bat. Add it in a checkout as well. Another optional thing. That way people are opting in to hear from you because they wanted that discount that you offer them on that pop-up and they actually like your brand because they're buying from you. So you get this nice warm audience to start with. That's the first two steps and start building up your list from there.

Brett:

And do you recommend sometimes offering like, Hey, for the biggest discounts or the best deals maybe is a way you want to word it or for to find out first about new releases, big drops, big events, whatever. Give us your phone number as well. Give us your mobile. Do you deploy that tactic?

Nick:

There's three main tactics that we'll use the escalated discount. So hey, 10% off of your email, the next step they see 15% off a phone number. Sure, why not? Let's save a little bit extra money. The next one is giving them that exclusive early access. And what's nice about this step is you can also target your current email subscribers. So if you have an upcoming launch coming out, a lot of times we're hiding the popups from everyone. So either popups from all of our current email subscribers because we don't want them to see this 10% discount again. So you make a new one for your upcoming drop coming out December 1st, sign up to be the first to know about our upcoming drop. December 1st. Put your phone number here. That way all those email subscribers who you already have are going to see this pop up as well.

Brett:

It's really smart and could not agree more. Email is going to run into more and new issues as we go. Mailboxes, inboxes are full, things like that. It's still going to be a relevant channel for the foreseeable future and beyond. But you got to add SMS, and I know a lot of people have resisted a surprising number of quality brands have resisted, delayed, maybe halfheartedly tried and abandoned SMS marketing, but if you're not running it and not running it effectively, you are leaving so much money on the table. In fact, if you can just kind of, and I know this is putting you on the spot a little bit, Nick, but when we add SMS to our email clients, what kind of lift do we often see on the retention side of marketing?

Nick:

It's funny because as we add it and it gets more popular, more and more people are taking us up on those SMS offers compared to some of the email ones. So it's almost becoming more popular. A reasonable split between the two channels is like 80% email, 20% of revenue coming from out of those. So if you have 30% coming from email and SMS combined, about 24% of that will be coming from email. About 6% from SMS. So if you're doing a hundred KA month right now, if you fire up SMS, you could probably expect to lift about five to 10 KA month.

Brett:

Love it. Love it. Really, really powerful. So okay, let's do this, Nick. We've got about two minutes left in the pod or something like that. If you had to rapid fire quickly come up with two additional ways to double your email results in 2025, what would they be?

Nick:

Two extra ways. They're getting a little bonus here, aren't they? Bonus? First one I would say is you need an air horn bonus. I would say dive into segmentation and let people hear from you on a very specific level. Easiest one is past customers versus current customers. That's an easy segment to break off. Talk to your current customers differently than you're talking to people who have never purchased from you before. Or if you have a hero product, people who have not gotten that hero product yet, try to sell them on it because it's their most popular option that they've avoided up to this point. And anyone who has purchased your hero product, cross-sell them on the other lineup. Even call out like, Hey, if you love the running shoe, try out these socks as well.

Brett:

Better segmentation. I love it. All right, one more. Make it quick.

Nick:

After you get deep with that segmentation, you want to focus on mobile first. A lot of people are on their phones a lot more than last year. Even more are going to be on next year. So just double check, triple check that everything that you're sending out through email or through SMS just looks good on their phone.

Brett:

Mobile first. Love it. So Nick, I know there's going to be a lot of people listening or watching to this that think, okay, I'm likely missing something. I'm missing opportunities. There's more I could be tapping into more I could be doing. And they may be saying to themselves, Hey, it's time that I talked to a pro, Simon that I talked to mg. I want Nick Flint to look at my email setup. What can we do for people, those who want to upgrade their email and SMS approach, what can we do for them?

Nick:

We have this nice little checklist that we put together. It's actually the top test that you could be running. I know it was one of the first things we focused on today is those AB tests. And you were asking what specific ones can they run? We knocked out 50 of the biggest AB tests that we've ever done, put it onto a spreadsheet. We can give you that for the price of $0, $0. Just hit me up through email, nick@omgcommerce.com, and I'll go ahead and send you that full checklist, free of charge.

Brett:

Love it. And then we're also happy to dig in, audit your account for qualifying brands. We can get in there, show you what you're missing, show you exactly what we would do for you to take your results up a notch. And hey, I know just from talking to dozens and dozens of brands, I'm very connected, dozen agency owners. Profitability is hard, right? The D two C game, the retail game in general is hard. And so you need email and SMS to be firing on all cylinders for you to reach your profitability targets. And hey, maybe you can go loan and that's the perfect fit for you. And if so, that's awesome. Hopefully Nick just gave you a couple of nuggets that you can use to supercharge your results. But if not, then we'd love to chat. And so reach out to us, omg commerce.com, click on the let's chat button or let's talk or whatever it says, I dunno. And then we'll go from there. Or email Nick directly, nick@omgcommerce.com. Nick Flint, ladies and gentlemen, Nick SuperPhone as always, thanks for coming on, man.

Nick:

I'll go ahead and hit the outro button here. Bye.

Brett:

We got to add that. That's so good. So appreciate it, Nick Golden as always. And also as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. Leave us that review on iTunes. If you've not done that, let know what you'd like to hear more of on the show. We'd love your feedback. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

In this fascinating episode, beauty industry veteran Carey Grange shares invaluable insights from her journey building major brands like Proactiv, Murad, and numerous other successful beauty and wellness companies. From the early days of infomercials to today's digital landscape, Carey reveals how the fundamental principles of effective performance marketing remain unchanged—and how modern brands can leverage these principles to drive growth across multiple channels while building lasting brand value.

Key Topics Covered:

• The essential elements of successful performance marketing campaigns, including authentic founder stories, compelling transformation narratives, and the critical role of social proof—and why these elements are more relevant than ever in today's digital landscape.
• Why channel strategy matters: How Murad used infomercials to become the #1 clinical skincare brand in Sephora and Ulta, and what this teaches us about modern omnichannel growth.
• The truth about value creation: Why discounting isn't necessary and how to build real value propositions that resonate with customers and protect your brand.
• The importance of constant testing and innovation: Why successful brands allocate 10-20% of their budget to experimental marketing, and how this "slush fund" approach drives long-term growth.

This episode is packed with actionable insights for any brand looking to scale through performance marketing while building lasting brand value in today's competitive landscape.

---

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction 

(08:59) Lessons From Carey’s Time At Murad

(20:41) Elements Of A Good Ad

(42:11) Always Be Testing 

(45:20) Conclusion

---

Show Notes:

• Carey Grange
• Growth Envy Marketing 
• Guthy-Renker
• Nestle
• Proactiv
• Meaningful Beauty
• Crepe Erase
• WEN by Chad Dean
• IT Cosmetics
• Murad
• Sephora
• Ulta
• Bare Minerals
• Boom By Cindy Joesph
• Ezra Firestone
• Flex Seal
• Ozempic 
• How OMG Commerce Throttled BOOM! Cosmetics to a $5m Per Year Brand on Amazon

---

Connect With Brett: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/ 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce 
• Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/ 

---

Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, Trevor Crump, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Bryan Porter and more.

---

Transcript:

Carey:

You might need to be on Amazon as much as you don't want to because your competitors are going to draft off your awareness and be there anyway. B, it's where customers are going to get reviews, and C, it's a built-in trust element.

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today we are talking about literally one of my favorite topics in all of marketing. We're talking about brand building through performance marketing. So I think historically people view those as two separate buckets, two separate worlds, two separate mind spaces. Am I building a brand and creating awareness or am I doing something that's performance driven, measurable, tangible, roas, CPA, things like that. But here's the deal. I think the two are not at odds with each other. I think they go hand in hand. And so if we think about what is building a brand other than driving demand for your product, allowing you to maintain prices, to build a following brand building allows you to expand your product line. It creates so many opportunities for you.

And performance marketing is really just marketing that gets people to take action and take action relatively quickly. And so my guest today is a pro in this space. She comes from the infomercial world, the direct response TV world, and she's really connected with so many great brands, CPG and other categories, and really few people understand brand building the way she does. And so my guest today is Carey Grange and she is the chief brand strategist for growth in the marketing. And we're going to get to hear some war stories, some good stories of brand building and performance marketing and really some lessons and some things that have always been true in marketing, how those apply to today's landscape. It's going to be a ton of fun. And so with that intro, Carey Grange, how's it going? And welcome to the show.

Carey:

Hi. Hi Brett. Well thanks first of all for having me here. I'm super excited to be here. And I also love talking about building brands through performance marketing. And that's kind of been my background since the beginning of my career. Pretty niche to the beauty space and the wellness space almost exclusively for CPG. But yeah, really working with brands that are tasked with driving omnichannel growth and finding new ways to intersect technology and media with where audiences are consuming content and find the financial utility in that. And that's actually how I see performance marketing as just a delivery vehicle for your brand message and one that generates an ROI be quite

Brett:

Efficient. And that allows it to be scalable, right? If it delivers a measurable, it delivers an ROI allows it to be scalable and yeah, love that framing. So I want people to get your background just a little bit, and then we're going to talk about some strategies and some tactics here that are very applicable for today. So you guys started in the infomercial space. What was that like and why did you get into that space?

Carey:

Yeah, well, it's great. I totally accidentally got into the infomercial space. I actually started my career at Guthy Ranker as a marketing coordinator, and it was the nineties and it was shortly after the deregulation of commercial advertising. And so people were able to do direct to consumer marketing and build that long form infomercial format. And it was the wild wild west, and it was the wild wild west, I think similar to the wild wild west that we're living in today as media continues to change. And so with that, it can be really overwhelming and intimidating and messy, but there's also a lot of opportunities. And so I think for those people who are naturally curious and can figure out how to find the utility in that media to reach audiences and build brand and generate revenue, they're the winners. And so Guthy Ranker, they were pioneers in using long form marketing to build brands.

And I like to say, in fact, I started, I was on the inaugural proactive team, which is like a mega brand, and it sold for a significant multiple to Nestle ultimately. But it didn't start that way. It started as a scrappy brand that was just on infomercial. There wasn't even an e-commerce component to it in the beginning. And so I like to say that became really an accidental brand because we had spent so much TV media on it with the sole intent of driving revenue, of acquiring customers and pulling them down an acquisition funnel and getting them to subscribe and to stick for as long as possible, and that was the objective. And then to find other brands that you could plug into that model.

Brett:

Yeah, it's super interesting because I think the proactive story where it was just strictly A-D-R-T-V play in the beginning, very similar to strictly D two C brands today. So your Shopify e-commerce brands that are just driving sales through Meta and Google and other places now expanding to other channels and then eventually wanting a big exit. I mean, that's really what Proactive did, but back in the day, pre Shopify and all that. So just as a bit of a frame of reference, so Gut the Ranker, if anybody's been in the director of marketing space, they know that name. They're the best of the best in the infomercial space. So you mentioned Proactive, that's one of their best known brands. What are the other brands that were part of the Guthy Riner family that will give people context?

Carey:

Yeah, I mean, the ones that I think people will know the best today would be Proactive Meaningful Beauty, which is Cindy Crawford's haircare Line Crepe Erase, which is a body line of products that deals with crepey skin for the aging woman when Haircare by Chaz Dean was another one. They had a partnership with IT cosmetics, they were part of that brand and had the exclusive direct to consumer distribution rights for that brand. Those are some pretty big ones that they're well known for. Yeah, it's such a good point. First of all, it was an incredible foundation to start there and to learn the industry from the ground up and to understand tracking and analytics and to even be like boots on the ground when you're adding a URL to a TV commercial for the very first time and gasping in fear over how are you going to do the attribution modeling? But we didn't even call

Brett:

It attribution

Carey:

Modeling. We didn't know what to call it yet. Will

Brett:

Anybody buy online? What are we going to do if they don't call in?

Carey:

Yeah, or no. The scarier part was will they buy online and how are we going to know the impact of our TV commercial? And it's exactly the dilemma that brands have today, which is what is the impact of our spend If we're spending over here, but we're getting the revenue over there, how do we know its impact? And so of course, again, that was before attribution modeling, but even today, attribution modeling is only so intelligent. Totally. And it becomes, you and I have talked about it before, it becomes increasingly complicated because the more fragmented media is, the more specialized each one of those channels are, the harder it is to keep all of those entities talking to each other and then to know how to look at those activities on a granular level, but then to understand how they're rolling up to your p and l ultimately, which is the objective of the brand owner, is to drive a healthy p and l. Totally.

Brett:

And it is one of those things that just the age old marketing question, how do we understand what's working? How much is it working? What's really driving growth? So what's driving incremental sales? What's more of a support medium? How does all this tie together? And I do think it's easier now than maybe it was in the early days, but I don't know, there's a lot of confusion. So we'll dive into attribution and some of those topics here just a little bit. One thing I would love to know, because you nailed it when you said, Hey, all of this has to feed into the p and l. And I think that's been one of the big resets in the D two C and e-commerce space is that pre pandemic, and certainly during the hypergrowth stage of the pandemic, when everybody was ordering online, it was like grow, grow, grow. We'll figure out profits later. It's going to happen, whatever to now, e-commerce brands know we have to be a real business. This all has to feed into a healthy p and l. And so marketing must drive business objectives. What are some of the things you learned in the infomercial space? I know those infomercial marketers or DR brands, they are dialed in. What are some of the principles you learned or some of the fundamentals you learned from a finance side p and l side

Carey:

And

Brett:

Make for a healthy DR business?

Carey:

Yeah. Well, I mean, I'd love to just step back a little bit and kind of frame it up in the context of where I probably spent the largest chunk of my career, which was actually at Murad. And the reason I bring that up is that was a true omnichannel business model. And I think that's what we're finding these pure play brands, like you were saying, that were launched during the pandemic. And really it was such an exciting time of entrepreneurialism. And as much as we see these unicorn moments of fast rise brands on TikTok and fast rise brands through Shopify and all these other areas, we've also seen a lot of brand failures because they don't understand how to run the business side of things. They don't know how to scale, and they reach that point of diminishing return. And so in fact, I read

Brett:

There's single channel, single source of new customer acquisition.

Carey:

When

Brett:

Something fundamentally shifts there, then they're in real trouble. And so there's also dangers to expanding channels and expanding customer acquisition channels. But

Carey:

Most of the successful brands

Brett:

We see are totally, most of the brands we see though are going multichannel or omnichannel. I do believe that's where you maximize value. And whether that's just to have a long sustaining profitable business or to have a successful exit, you got to be got to be more than just D two C. So probably D two C marketplace and retail or some combination thereof, hundred percent omnichannel brand. Go ahead.

Carey:

It's perfect because what you're trying to do is go, where is my customer? And so you're always looking for market

Brett:

Fit and how do they want to buy,

Carey:

Right? If you're building a brand, what's the market fit? So how do they want to buy? So if you're really being customer centric, then that will drive your media strategy, that will drive your distribution strategy. And so often you're right that singular channel is not enough, and that's actually not how customers are buying. And so one of the risks then is you are spending money and creating category awareness and brand awareness that you're not actually picking up then where your customers are making purchase decisions and actually making that purchase. And your competition will draft off of that and pick that up, those clever marketers. So if your objective is, Hey, I just want to sell some stuff through this channel that I'm really good at, cool. But if you want to build a brand and really grow something and scale it as much as you can, which is usually the name of the game of the people that I deal with, and I imagine the clients that you bring into OMG commerce, then you really are looking at an omnichannel strategy.

And then you want to go, okay, what are my channels of distribution and how is the media that I'm spending a being spent as efficiently as possible? But by efficient, I mean it's returning an investment on that direct spend, but it's also pushing the sell through in all of our other channels because it's an all ships rise. And so that's why I'd like to kind of joke about the accidental brand build of proactive, the brand building at as accidental. It was actually quite strategic. And so I often like to talk about brands are really good at knowing their what, this is my product. And a lot of innovators are so great at that, and they're great at knowing why I wanted to develop this, but what's missing is how am I now going to build this business? And that's where strategy comes in. And I have noticed that in today's marketplace, a lot of brands are playing in tactics.

I need to be on YouTube, I need to be on Amazon, I need to be in meta, I need to have social organic, I need, and there's all of these activities happening on, and it gives the illusion of growth, but the reality is it can lead to bloated infrastructures, a bunch of cross channel conflict, and ultimately an impotent marketing spend that isn't having impact, that isn't realizing the growth that you need. So at mrad, we went into infomercial as a strategy. And in fact, I was recruited specifically to launch an infomercial for the business, and it was kind of revolutionary at the time. And having come from Guthy Ranker, I was super excited because I had only worked on beauty brands at Guthy Ranker, and I thought, oh my God, I'm going to go work for a real beauty company in rad. They're in spas and salons, they're going into retail. Well, my counterparts were not as excited about me being there. I did not get a warm reception because the only people that wanted me there were the Mirad family members were Dr. Mrad and our CEO, Richard, his nephew. And so they hired me. So the rest of the

Brett:

Team see you as competition, or they just saw you as some kind of alien. What are you doing? We've got our stuff together.

Carey:

They saw me as the person who was going to denigrate the brand. How can you bring in this lowbrow cheesy format into our business? And so our

Brett:

Buyers are more sophisticated.

Carey:

Our

Brett:

Buyers will not respond to this low brow, low class, dr. Direct response type that

Carey:

Exactly, exactly. But the RADS were figure it out. I think what I did right in that situation and is a learning to apply to today's landscape too, is to then get really curious and understand why. So how could this potentially be an obstacle to your retail growth? And then how do we overcome that? And so in those days, production values for example, was a big part of it. So we had to be really careful not to have the cheesy bells and the whistles and the dings and the dot wacky stuff like the sound effects. It needed to be elegant and high end, but it also needed to do what an infomercial does. And what an infomercial does is or did, there're not as many. They're still out there. There's not as many of them anymore.

Brett:

Still out there.

Carey:

Still out there. They're still out there. But what they do is what we need today's performance media to do, which is to get your audience to stop. It's the thumb stop, it's the stop the scroll. It's to take action. If the TV's on in the background, it's to, Ooh, I'm listening to that headline. How do I stop, turn around, take notice and create need and then pull them down an acquisition funnel. So it's really, there's a lot of skill involved actually with getting an audience who's bombarded with information and a lot of external inputs to stop and say, oh, I'm curious about this. I want to learn more. I might need this. And then to actually get them to make a transaction is pretty powerful. So we needed to do creatives that did that, but that also were aligned with the brand message now in our omnichannel environment. So we had an infomercial, we had a website which was not optimized at all. And that's a whole nother story about how you build a D two C business from a technology and an infrastructure standpoint within a brand. It's a monstrous task, although much less expensive and easier to execute in today's landscape with

Brett:

So many open

Carey:

Source solutions. Easier for sure, for sure.

Brett:

I'm curious though, just real quick, why did the mirad want to do DR tv? So why did they want to do an infomercial? So I mean, their omnichannel, they're growing. Things are good, and their team didn't want it. Why did they want to do

Carey:

Infomercial? They had had an early experience with infomercial where the sales were just explosive, and so they really wanted to drive the growth of the brand period. They knew the value of it. So then what we were tasked with is going, well, what channels of distribution are we in? How do we support those channels of distribution while also making sure that this channel of distribution, which was the infomercial, which we looked at as a sales channel in that organization in addition to a marketing function. So it had a cross functionality. How do we make sure that it has all of the sales promotion and the elements that it needs to perform? And so that's what we set out to do, and we launched an infomercial and it was multifunctional in its benefits. It created brand awareness, it educated the customer. And actually, I am circling back to answer your initial question, which was, what did you learn that's relevant today? And that is what are those elements, right? It communicated on authentic founder story, which I'd say to this day is

Brett:

Still

Carey:

Powerful

Brett:

Today. Yeah,

Carey:

It's still powerful today, and it's a really powerful trust element, and that's what customers are looking for. It showed that we solved a problem. And in today's marketplace, again, people are looking to have their problems solved. So in our case, it was we were clearing acne, we were addressing hyperpigmentation on the skin, we were addressing fine lines and wrinkles. We were able to communicate a transformation benefit, which is if you use this, you'll get this result. So again, that could be shown through a problem solution, but transformation can also be shown through emotion, and that's the value of testimonials. So we were able to use testimonials, which in today's day and age is influencers and reviews.

Brett:

Yeah, UGC, totally.

Carey:

It's UGC, and it's your reviews. It's the social proof. So again, the infomercials have that social proof as part of it, but that again, is a really powerful trust element for customers. Oh, it worked for them, maybe it'll work for me. And that also had the function of that person then being able to communicate, here's how this changed my life. So it's one thing to just show a person with clear skin and you're like, okay, that looks efficacious. Maybe it'll work for me. But if you have a testimonial who now with great emotion is like, I feel beautiful. Again, I can go out with confidence. I went on a date. There's a transformation message that's quite powerful and is still powerful in today's media landscape. We were able to show the proof scientific claims, and I can kind of break down further what that formula is. But ultimately, it became a self-sustaining advertising vehicle that drove the overall growth of the mrad brand. And it drove significant sales for Sephora and Ulta placing us as the number one clinical skincare brand in both of those channels. And at the same time, it was in its own channel, quite profitable. And we were able to acquire customers. And it was great from a cashflow standpoint for us because, well, I should say from a margin standpoint, it was a tricky cashflow model because we would deficit finance the acquisition of our customers.

Brett:

Got

Carey:

It. But it's also a realtime collectible when you're selling direct to consumer, and it had better margin. We weren't

Brett:

Selling a wholesale cash right away, at least that initial sale.

So I do want to break down that form. I that'd be super valuable. I think it totally applies to today, but I think what's really important to point out here is that, yeah, you were running this infomercial. It was driving direct sales either on the phone or someone ordering online, which was kind of new-ish at that time, but then it was also driving tons of sales in Sephora and Ulta making you a top seller there. We see the same thing here, right? If you've got a killer YouTube campaign, meta campaign, you're doing something OTT or whatever, it's going to drive direct sales on your.com, but it's also going to create great lift on Amazon. If you're selling on Amazon, it's going to drive retail sales if you're doing that. And so yeah, these principles apply, but what are some of those elements? What's that formula look like?

Carey:

Yeah, well, so from rad, I actually went and ended up launching a beauty brands incubator, and Guthy Ranker ended up being mine and my partner's investment partners in the brand. So it was a Guthy Ranker beauty brand incubator. And when we would look at brands that we could acquire and do various different JV and licensing deal structures with, and we had a very specific, I guess, lens of what we would look for from these brands to be like, these are going to be powerful performance marketing brands. And it's what worked for us in the proactive days. It's what worked in murat. And it's what I see when we evaluate brands today. And I imagine the ones that you're seeing so effective with your business model of that YouTube top of funnel, and that you can then pull down that kind of acquisition funnel pushed to Amazon.

I imagine they have similar attributes. What I would say is they just happen at different times now, so it might be parsed out a little bit differently. So whereas an infomercial or a longer format might have all of these elements now, I would say, does the brand have these elements? And at what point in the customer journey do you bring these elements to the table? So I have my notes here. So the first one I already mentioned, which is that authentic founder story. And if you don't have a founder, can you have a sounding story? This product exists for these reasons. Are you able to communicate that? Because customers will resonate with that. It's a powerful trust element. It has to solve

Brett:

The problem. I want to give you a quick example here too. I think this illustrates the point nicely. We were just evaluating a pet brand. It's pet brand, actually quite a few people have heard of that are listening and they had some killer, funny, engaging multiple actors. You're laughing, you're watching, you see Kaz in the thing, and you're like, that's a great ad. They also had a very, very simple founder, just founder direct to camera, but this founder is passionate about cats and passionate about this product and how it helps cats. Very simple production quality. But I'm telling you, the CPA was very similar between that brand, that founder's story, simple low cost video, and some really high production value ads as well.

Carey:

I love that.

Brett:

I think the high production value price is a greater upside. It's probably more scalable, but man founder stories, they still work. Do not overlook them.

Carey:

I love the product so much. I bought the company message, right?

Brett:

Remember those from the

Carey:

Seventies and the eighties growing

Brett:

Up? I'm not just a hair club for men president,

Carey:

I'm also the

Brett:

Customer, whatever.

Carey:

Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly it. There's just such credibility behind it. I give this to my own children. I made this out of this need. And because of that, we believe you. It's a strong trust element. We think you've got our back. There's a real life person or a real life message behind it. Totally. We also know that purpose is really important for people. So again, in the absence of a founder story, if you can have a founding story, a reason for being, I think that's really important that, and if you don't have it, come up with one. And I'll say, we brought in brands that had really great technologies and we actually created a founding story behind it. We saw this need, we took our backgrounds, we've created it, and we're bringing it to you. So have that founding story. So smart, 100% smart, love it. And it gives you great storytelling about your brand. And that's ultimately what you're trying to do is that you want there to be a reason

Brett:

That's commercial is right. That's what a good ad is. It's a good story. It's storytelling for sure.

Carey:

It's what a good YouTube ad is. Actually, I was watching one of your YouTube trainings that it broke for commercial and it went to Chuck Norris's wife talking about this product that they developed that came out of her needs and his advocacy for her and staying by her fed. It was a great story. And now you're like, Ooh, what is it? I want to know more. Maybe it's great for me. Totally. So yeah,

Brett:

Love that.

Carey:

So

Brett:

Founder story, that's one element

Carey:

Solves a problem. It addresses a pain point. And the pain point could be something like, I have acne. I want to lose weight, I want to grow hair, I want to lose hair, I want to remove hair. Whatever it may be. What's that pain point? The other thing is it needs to be transformational, and that's either visual or emotionally, but it needs to be something you can communicate through your media. And maybe that's through users, maybe that's through celebrity endorsement. Maybe that's through your reviews, but ultimately, are you seeing lives transformed? I feel more confident. I feel more beautiful. I have more time with my children. I'm achieving financial freedom, whatever it may be. People aren't buying stuff. They're buying an outcome to make their life better. And so transformation is a really important emotional hook,

Brett:

And it's really transformation that you can see and feel, right? It's transformation that the buyer, the consumer can see and feel. And then it also has to be a transformation that you can convey in a way where people watching can see and feel it.

Carey:

Yeah, it's engaging and it's emotional. And I do think there's this subconscious attachment to your brand that forms as well, and a real positive brand affinity that comes with the transformation. It's inspiring. Proof is really important. Proof can come in a lot of different ways. Obviously befores and afters are really powerful scientific claims. Did we study? Is there a study behind an ingredient? Is there research? Is there, we put X amount of people on, this is a subjective claim, a hundred percent agree that they experienced X with this, but that proof, and again, you're probably not going to lead with proof and a thumb scroll, but if you're starting to pull them down a funnel funnel, make sure that you have that proof. Because again, these are all really powerful trust elements in your creatives. And then social proof. And we see now it's the old school infomercial, but it's the user generated content. It's the influencer, it's the reviews where people genuinely believe it's going to work for them. And so I don't think I need to beat the drum of social proof to this crowd. I think we all actually really understand the value of social proof in today's day and age. I think if anything, it's more how do we use that social proof now as part of our whole campaign. So

I like talking about those

Brett:

Stories. One thing I'll double click on there, which I think is important, is I remember when I was getting started in TV in the early two thousands, I would hear people say, oh, testimonials don't work. And now there's a little bit of a trend towards people saying, UGC doesn't work. And I think the only principle I would underscore there, or the only nuance there is that bad testimonials don't work and boring U GC doesn't work, but the real stuff, the stuff from real customers where they're conveying their story and their emotions, and you can feel the authenticity that works. Now, it worked 20 years ago, 50 years ago, and I think it will always work, right? It's just the lame,

Carey:

Boring system. It'll work. I would wager my house on it that it's important. And I think you raised a really good point. It's the quality of it. And I'll give you an example. We have in infomercials, we would test removing or on a website and other forms of creative, we would test moving different testimonials in and out. And sometimes a testimonial in and of itself, it can be a lever mover, a dial mover for a campaign, adding them or removing them. So I think you're right. And I think we're also living in a day and age again, where we put so much pressure on the immediate performance of our ads that if something doesn't work, we kind of make this sweeping judgment. This does not work.

Brett:

Exactly,

Carey:

Exactly.

Brett:

GC mashup, it didn't work. And you're like, well, yeah, but the

Carey:

SOC doesn't work

Brett:

Properly. Didn't run it. Yeah. Right?

Carey:

Yeah. And so strategically, the value and the value of working with agencies is you have to test not everything is going to work. And that's what traditional performance marketers do, is they're always testing and you never let rest on your laurels. Totally. You keep testing every

Brett:

Ad, every angle, everything you test eventually will stop working. So you always got to be finding the next thing. So you talked about social proof, other elements that you're looking for. Yep,

Carey:

Value, you just brought it up your offer a value proposition and value and offer too. Sometimes they're not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Having a good offer is very important, and an offer can and will make or break your campaign. And I do believe offers need to be refreshed, but oftentimes withstanding between you and success is a really compelling offer. But a value proposition and value can come in a lot of different ways. And value is not synonymous with discounting. So I think, again, when you're in a world of offers and sales promotion, the first thing that a lot of rams do is they discount. And that's another fear of being in the performance marketing space, is they don't want to discount because again, they're afraid it's going to denigrate their retail brand, but discount and value are not the same. So how do you build up and create that value for your customer? And so that value,

Brett:

That's just really where the perceived benefit, the perceived benefit of the product outweighs the monetary cost. Right. What else would you say about value? How do we create value apart from discounting?

Carey:

Yeah. Well, value can come in different ways. So among them being, are you giving me more time in my day? There's value to that. Are you replacing multiple products that I'm already using with this single step? There's value to that. Is it highly concentrated? And I'm not, I can add water at home and I'm not paying these big heavy shipping fees, which is negatively impacting the environment. There's value to that. Do you have a give back program to someone else? Oh, that's really important to me. That makes me feel good about being part of the brand. Tom's Shoes one for one. There's value to that. So there's lots of ways to create value without discounting.

Brett:

Yeah, I wanted the shoes anyway, but now that I know I've got a little bit of philanthropy or I'm helping kids in need or something now that allows me to justify the purchase. So love that discussion on value. And I'm really glad you framed it, that it does not have to be a discount. It does not have to be coupons. You do not have to cheapen your brand, but you do have to create

Carey:

Value. You have to create value and then demo. And of course that's so great about a place like YouTube where you can show how the product works and just for whatever reason, what's coming to mind is, and some of your older viewers might remember Bare Essentials or Bare Minerals. It was color cosmetic brand, and it was a loose powder format, which was kind of different at the time. And they were experiencing high returns because customers didn't know how to use it and it was messy. And so in their ads, they would do the you swirl, tap buff Swirl, tap Buff. Well, by the time it got to the retail shelf, or even when they shift it to the customer, they understood how to use the product. And so demonstration is a really, I know how to use it, which means my compliance is going to be higher, which means my satisfaction in the product is going to be greater, which means I'm going to achieve better results, and I'm less likely to make a return or leave a negative review. So is there demonstration? And then of course, education and those can often be one and the same. So again, you might see maybe that's not necessarily on your leading media, but if you pull them down like a long scroll landing page, you might see some demonstration in there about here's how you use it. And that's really valuable.

Brett:

And we think that's a key component. If you're designing YouTube ad creatives, the demonstration piece is absolutely critical. I would say the same is true for Meta and TikTok as well. So yeah, to your point, if someone sees an action, I swirl Tap Buff, if that was

Carey:

Buff,

Brett:

That right?

Carey:

I can't believe that came. I was so old. But yeah,

Brett:

That was great. It was effective, but I remembered it. And that's not even my product type of thing. And so one, I think it makes it easier to say yes to the purchase because now I see, oh, this was pretty easy when we were running a boom by Cindy Joseph, when Ezra Firestone's brands, they had

Brett:

Boom

Brett:

Stick, which is kind of like a makeup stick that that could replace your whole makeup back. And so when they would do the demo, it's like, Hey, you choose one of these three sticks, you just apply it here, then you put it on your lips and the demo's super easy. You're like, that's it. That's all I have to do. And now I don't have to wear any other makeup if I don't want to. And so seeing that demonstration I think removes or reduces the buyer hesitation, helps you overcome objections, but then to your point, it ensures you use it properly. You're more satisfied with it. So more likely to leave a good review, less likely to return the product. And so demonstration is really valuable. And one thing I've heard, I'm curious your perspective on this, because I don't know that this fully applies to the beauty. I think it kind of doesn't, but I've heard Flex Seal, that's another example of start as an infomercial. Now it's become a bit of a brand like the spray on stuff that you can use to seal your pots around your house, your gutters or whatever. There's this concept of a magic demo where he

Brett:

Sprays

Brett:

Flex Seal on the bottom of his truck and then he drives it into water and it floats or whatever.

Carey:

I love a magic solo. Yeah, a visual hammer. We call those visual hammers. How are you showing visual hammers? Yeah, this is how it works.

Brett:

So you'll never use it in this capacity, but if it's good enough to do this, think what it will do for you just as you're sealing your pots or whatever.

Carey:

Oh my gosh, Oz. So how do you apply that is, yeah, I was going to say, Ozempic, what is $130 too much to spend on a weight loss product if you don't have five or 10 or more pounds to lose? So then you're like, oh my gosh, if Ozempic was the biggest audience for it was people who had more like five to 10 pounds to lose. Because if it's going to help someone lose 80 pounds, then it's going to help me get my last five off. So those extremes can be really, really powerful. But the Boone Stick is the perfect example. You guys did so many things right with that because there was a compelling, and I watched it, there was a compelling founder story, but then you did the other thing that's really important was they filled a white space, they weren't look, it was makeup and a stick.

Brett:

Brilliant.

Carey:

That doesn't exist already. So it was taking something that already exists. It's applying it in a way that, because the other piece is it needs to fit into someone's regular routine. Women apply makeup already. It hits an emotional pain point, which is I'm an older demographic, I have these concerns. I'm feeling older. I am looking older. No one's making anything for me. Traditional makeup is going to sit in my fine lines and wrinkles. No one's making anything for me.

Boom, stick to the rescue. It's simple. It fits into your routine. It's specifically formulated four fine lines and wrinkles, so it's not going to sit in there. Here's how you use it. Less is more. It's going to make you not look as age. Now you've hit my pain points. I have a founder story. You've demonstrated it. It's inclusive. You have a real broad demographic of users. And that's the other thing that's mission critical in today's day and age. So first of all, it was older women. You had, in addition to the founder who is Caucasian, you had an African American, you had an Asian, right? It was showing the range of skin tones that it worked for, and it was really representative of that customer. And then there was value because this is replacing all of those other things. You didn't have to discount it.

So I would say with that campaign, you crushed all of these things and through your channels of distribution, and it caught my attention 100%. And then the other thing that you brought up, so does it fill that white space for us? We were always looking for something that was replenishable. Can you get people into a continuity? And that might fit into the offer component and then the trust are there easy returns? So in addition to the founder story, which is a powerful trust element, and all of the things that we know to do about EasyPay, all of those things, a money back guarantee, are there easy returns? I think that's why channel strategy

Brett:

Is you're removing the risk, right? You're taking away the risk that a customer may perceive about making the purchase and just lowering the barrier to say yes.

Carey:

And my feeling is back in the olden days, that might come through easy returns and money back guarantee today that might determine your channel strategy, which is you might need to be on Amazon as much as you don't want to because your competitors are going to draft off your awareness and be there anyway. B, it's where customers are going to get reviews. And C, it's a built in trust element. I know I can return here. So there's the value and there's the convenience. So again, that's where channel strategy rolls into all of these attributes that I talked about.

Brett:

Yeah, really good point. And just to put a bow on the boom, my Cindy Joseph story there, or Boom, beauty is the brand now, but we helped them launch on Amazon a few years ago, and they were leaning heavy into Meta. We were running YouTube and Google. And so the new customer acquisition channels were on fire, but they were not on Amazon. Well, some other brands had kind of built up, launched on Amazon and were kind of squatting on the brand name of Boom.

Brett:

They were

Brett:

Just selling products capitalizing on that. So when we launched them on Boom, and there were headwinds and there were difficulties, and we did some ad strategies on Amazon. And so there was pretty comprehensive what we did there, but they went from zero to almost 6 million in sales on Amazon the first year. And

Brett:

That's incredible.

Carey:

It

Brett:

Did not cannibalize their core business. Now, I think a lot of that was just pent up demand. A lot of it was we opened up a new channel and we were able to grow that as a standalone as well. But yeah, you got to be thinking about these other channels. I know there are still some cases where it makes sense to not be on Amazon, but you've got to really think that through. For most brands. You got to be there.

Carey:

I think for most brands, you have to be there. It's a necessary evil for all of those reasons. And to your point, you're otherwise creating demand for your competition. And yeah, it's a bummer. And I feel the same way about paid search. You can put all of this effort into your meta advertising, into your YouTube advertising, and customers are still going to go to search. And if you're not buying your branded term, which is just frustrating, someone else will. So how do you keep owning that? And so again, that kind of goes back to the brand side of things is like, and you and I talked about this too, why I really value agency partnerships.

You need to really understand all of those variables, and you need to lean into the wisdom and the guidance and the experience in these respective channels that your agencies have, but also listen in terms of the education, in terms of what type of repetition do you need, where should you be taking risks, like going into an Amazon versus not fine tuning your marketing messaging, your offer, you're never going to hit it out of the gate ever. And then once you do fine tune it and nail it, you're going to have to keep updating that anyway. And so build into your budget and into your strategy and into your planning, that kind of slush fund and that time to always be learning and refining and testing. Because every time you do land on that magic mix, you kind of want to hit the gas and optimize that as much as possible while you're running that parallel path of getting the next thing going. It's a unicorn experience to nail it all at once. It's very rare. And so I think where a lot of brands miss is, again, this didn't work in this configuration, I'm out. It doesn't work. And the reality is, if you're in the ballpark, you can fine tune it and you can get it there, and you'll be able to scale your brand and drive total channel growth. 100%.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah, it's really good. And so kind of those elements, if you've got them all, and you're still not quite there, it's not quite hitting your goals or your targets and you need to refine and maybe that the thumbs stop or the scroll stopper wasn't quite on point, or it's maybe you're telling the founder story, but it's missing an element, it's missing some emotion to it. Or maybe you've got UGC, but it's not the right UGC, or maybe you're showing some value, but it's not landing. And so I think that's where you got to test, you got to iterate, you got to get feedback from other people that are in your market.

Carey:

Totally.

Brett:

Elements are there. It should work. You just got to keep iterating. And so one thing I'll say, and we're bad out of time when it comes to having this slush fund or this test fund, I've heard different brands have different philosophies. Google called it for their employees, they call it the 20% time, Hey, do your core job, but then take 20% of your time and explore, do wild stuff, invent the next Gmail or the next other billion user product or whatever. I know some brands will say, Hey, we're going to take 10% of every channel's budget and we're going to try wild stuff. We're going to try just experimental. So because we're going to land on something, most of that will not work. We're going to occasionally land on something that will be a moonshot. And if you're not always testing something, eventually your core stuff's going to die, and then you're not going to have anything left. But any perspective on that slush fund or test budget or however you look at that?

Carey:

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. So I've looked at Slush fund a couple different ways. So one of them is when you have a working campaign, let's say at Rad,

We're humming, we've got all the channels going, there was always 10% of slush that was going toward newness. What else can we be testing, iterating, whatever in different environments? For example, when I was doing consulting work for Guthy Ranker, prior to us launching the incubator together, there was a resource allocation to innovation. And I got to be a part of that, which is we can't be competing for resources. We have these 100, 200, $400 million a year brand. We have a function-based organization. So good luck if you're trying to innovate and create new. And ultimately, that's how we ended up investing in the incubator they invested in. The incubator that I ended up running with my business partner was because they realized it's a very different budget, skillset, mindset, resource allocation, than what's required to run your core brand. And so some brands will do it within their company, and I've seen a lot of companies actually just create full on incubator environments. If you can create an incubator environment within your company, cool. But I like that 20% idea, which is just always facilitating that new creativity. And what's great about that is what you're learning there, you then apply to the core business. And so I like that. Always,

Brett:

Always be learning, even so it doesn't totally hit. You'll almost always learn something. There'll be some happy accidents. There'll be the accidental brand or the accidental strategy that, Hey, we were testing this, we learned something else. And so you think you've always got to be

Carey:

Testing 20% somewhere.

That's it. And I know we have to go, but that's the thing. If you're not always learning, you're missing the next thing that's happening and things are moving so quickly. And so again, that's where your agency partnership is mission critical, because when you're busy running your brand, you just can't have your finger on the pulse of how technology is evolving. What you do know is what your business objectives are and who your customer is, and what your brand is and what you stand for. And then you can partner with your agency on those strategies and what levers you're going to pull to roll up to that p and l objective.

Brett:

And for the record, I did not pay Carey to throw in those plugs for working with your agency, but we both just believe it's true, right? For the right brand. Some brands do well with in-house teams. I think that requires another skillset, and it's really hard, and it probably fits for a certain large size brand, but man, lean on your agencies, lean on your agencies because they do bring a wealth of knowledge.

Carey:

I credit some of my agencies over the tenure of my career with the success of some pretty big campaigns, it would be arrogant to suggest that I did it all by myself. I made it's 100% of team effort. And so lean into the skills, the expertise, the passion of those outsourced solutions. And from a p and l management standpoint, oftentimes those costs then can be variable to your fixed expense. So that's

Brett:

A plus

Carey:

Too.

Brett:

Awesome. Carey Grange, ladies and gentlemen, chief Brand Strateg, growth Envy Marketing. So if you're listening to this and you're like, dang, I need some strategic help, some brand growth help, I need someone like Carey to help tie things together for me. How can people get in touch with you, Carey, and what's the best way for them to start that dialogue?

Carey:

Oh my gosh, thank you. I mean, first of all, I'm on LinkedIn like everyone else, so my name is probably spelled on here somewhere, C-A-R-E-Y, Carey Grange, and growth envy marketing.com is our website. And yeah, we love working with founder brands. We love working with startups. I love working with legacy brands who are looking to inject newness and life and growth into an existing brand without losing the essence of who they are. So what's that evolution and how can you use performance marketing to drive brand growth? And that's typically to position you for some type of an exit or event. And so I love working with brands too, on then how are we driving sales and getting that healthy EBITDA and building that right, the right brand strategies, but also the right infrastructure strategies and business strategies around that. So come to our website. We'd love to talk with you,

Brett:

And I'll link to in the show notes, but it's Carey Grange, C-A-R-E-Y-G-R-A-N-G-E. So check her out. I feel like Carey, we're just getting started. I could talk to you for another several hours about this. And so we'll have to schedule round two in the near future. But thank you so much for your time. Tons of fun.

Carey:

Would love it. Thanks for including me.

Brett:

Absolutely. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. Leave us that review on iTunes. If you've not done so, share this episode with a friend who might find it valuable. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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‍

Learn the secrets behind securing free press coverage for eCommerce brands. Contrary to popular belief, free PR isn’t reserved only for companies that hire expensive PR agencies. Whether you're launching a new product or looking to boost your brand's visibility, this episode is packed with actionable insights that could make all of your other marketing efforts better.

Key topics covered:

• The CPR (Credibility, Point of View, Relevance) method: A foolproof framework for crafting compelling pitches that grab journalists' attention.
• How to approach gift guide pitches and maximize your chances of inclusion in coveted holiday roundups.
• Strategies for leveraging product launches and press releases to create buzz and secure media coverage.
• Tips for building and nurturing relationships with journalists, including how to use email tracking and follow-up techniques.
• Cost-effective tools and resources for managing your own PR efforts, even without prior experience or agency support.

Don't miss this opportunity to learn how you can take control of your brand's narrative and secure valuable media coverage without breaking the bank. Gloria's practical advice and insider tips will empower you to become your brand's best advocate and unlock the untapped potential of PR for your eCommerce brand.

---

Chapters: 

(00:00) Introduction 

(03:29) From Diplomat to PR

(08:00) PR Basics

(13:00) Gift Guides

(16:33) Crafting Your Pitch

(23:11) Building Media Relationships

(24:32) Finding Your Media Outlet

(27:27) Product Launches

(32:13) Founder Stories

(33:16) Case Studies

(34:26) Follow-Up Tips

(36:26) Tools & Resources

(37:30) Conclusion

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Show Notes:

• Gloria Chou
• Gloria Chou PR
• Small Business PR Podcast
• Free PR Masterclass

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Connect With Brett: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/ 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce 
• Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/ 

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Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, Trevor Crump, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Bryan Porter and more

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Transcript:

Gloria:

How can we disrupt that industry? Because here's the thing, if you keep paying an agency, the moment you stop paying them, they walk away with the relationships.

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today we're talking about a topic that I don't believe we've ever discussed on the podcast before, but it has tons of potential and I believe it's a missed opportunity for you, and that is pr, getting free press for your brand, for your product launches, and how you can leverage all of that to your benefit. Now, as you know, listening into the pod, I'm a paid ads guy. I love YouTube, I love Google, I love meta, Amazon, all of that works. All that is critical. But the best brands I know, the brands that truly scale and the brands that maintain that growth always have something other than paid ads working for them. It's either organic rankings or it's virality and lots of people just naturally talking about them or it's pr. And so can't wait to dive into this topic I have with me, Gloria Chou from Gloria Chou PR and the host of Small Business PR podcast. She's a wealth of knowledge. She's got a unique story and she's going to show you how to leverage PR for growth for your brand. And so with that, Gloria Chou, ladies and gentlemen, Gloria, how's it going? And welcome to the show.

Gloria:

Hey, thanks for having me. It's good. It's getting cold here in Brooklyn, so the seasons are changing.

Brett:

I love it. I appreciate all seasons now of kind of like, Hey, let's enjoy every aspect of life. Don't like it as much when it's a hundred degrees in the Midwest and humid. Not my F, but dude, when it starts to cool off, I just get fired up. I got more energy, I feel more alive. So yep, I'm here for it. And you're in Brooklyn. One of my favorite spots, I'll actually be there in a few weeks, but what do you love so much about Brooklyn? Are you a long time Brooklyn resident?

Gloria:

So I'm actually from la. I was born and raised in la. I also grew up a little bit in Beijing where my mom lives. So I speak Chinese. I've been in New York now for about 10 years, on and off. Interestingly enough, previously to this, I was a US diplomat, so I worked abroad in Canada and also one year in Washington dc but I love New York. It's my sole home. It's not the highest quality of life, we all know that. But the diversity here is unmatched and I love it. I don't think it's our forever home. My husband's from Italy, so I think eventually we'll move to Europe, but we got a few good years left here.

Brett:

That's great. Yeah, the energy, the cultural diversity, the restaurants, the views, so many cool things that New York has going for it. So let's just quickly make the New York LA comparison. You prefer New York over la and if so, why

Gloria:

A hundred percent? Well, first of all, I don't like driving at all, so that's a no-no for me, I love biking and walking, so just from that perspective, New York all the way.

Brett:

Perfect. So we're going to dive into PR and you've got some very practical tips and advice for retail brands, e-commerce brands, omnichannel brands on how to leverage. Super excited about that. But I'm curious, how does one go from US diplomat to PR rockstar? How do you make that transition?

Gloria:

It's a very untraditional thing. So I actually never worked a day in my life in any PR or marketing agency, and that's very unheard of. And so when I was in government, I always wanted to switch into communications. I was writing speeches for the ambassador, and I just love to see my friends win. I always say that in my previous life I was like that hip hop mc like hyping everyone up. I just love hyping my friends up. And so I applied for I kid you not a thousand jobs in PR firms. And they all said, your experience is interesting, but we're really looking for someone with that traditional agency background. And so immediately

Brett:

Nobody saw the ability to make that leap. It was not computing for the hiring managers. And I

Gloria:

Realized, wow, this is an industry that is so not narrow-minded, but very gate kept, very traditional, very kind of insiders, like cool kids club. You're either in the club or you're not. And so as someone who was never in the club, I had to literally, I got my first client and he's like, we're a small FinTech. I had no idea what that was. I didn't study finance. And he's like, if you can get us on CNBC and New York Times and Wall Street Journal, we'll pay you a couple hundred bucks. And first of all, no PR person would do guaranteed features, but I had to start somewhere. So I paid my dues. And so I literally sat with the engineers looking at just data, and I'm not a numbers person, I'm an agent that's bad at math, trying to figure out what is the best story that I can pitch. And then I didn't have any contact, so I didn't have journalists and I'm like, Hey buddy. And so I kid you not dial zero from the operator by googling New York time newsroom.

And with my shaky hands and my sweaty palms, I had to practice cold pitching from the operator and to get them to stay on the phone with me until the producer or the editor. And I think through doing that thousands of times and just emails that cold pitching made me see patterns on what worked and what I ended up getting my clients featured on everything New York Times for as Wall Street Journal, CNBC. And then I turned it into a framework. And so now my whole thing is, you know what, yes, the industry is gate kept, but there absolutely is a way to cold pitch and journalists want to hear from the founder directly. So how can we implement that as a system? And so that's what I teach now in my program.

Brett:

I love that so much because I really believe doing things like that where you're pitching on the phone live, you're getting rejected, you're battling that, you're trying to keep people on the phone. I think that's a master's degree or more in PR because a lot of people that got the PR degrees never did that and they never learned it. My son is selling door to door, he's selling solar, residential solar, and I told him, I'm like, Hey, this is a grind and maybe it's an untraditional path or nontraditional path, but you will learn sales in a far different way than somebody who's just had formal training. And so a big believer in just getting out there doing it.

Gloria:

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Brett:

So very cool. I do have just one question that I'm kind of curious about. So you're a speech writer for the ambassador. What's that? Are you listening and you're like, man, you totally butchered that line. That is not the inflection I meant for that piece. Or you were like, we just stick to the script because what I wrote is beautiful. Well, what's that hearing someone deliver your speech?

Gloria:

So it's very, in the bureaucracy, there's many different layers. So I didn't write all of his speeches. It depended on the event, and I was given an opportunity to write a few of those speeches. Now, obviously because it's very bureaucratic, there were many different people involved all the time, and it moved very slowly. So it wasn't like what I wrote was what was delivered, right? There was so many other layers to it, but it was probably one of the more fun parts of my job doing the external communications. And that's really what I love and is my natural habitat. I just didn't get to do a lot of it because when you start, you have to stay in your lane. And I realized very quickly that I'm just not made to be a bureaucrat. I'm more of a creative entrepreneur. And so that's why I gave up my pension and a 25 year career that would've pretty much set me up for life to pursue something else. I moved back home, got on unemployment and kind of restarted everything after killing my ego.

Brett:

That is the true entrepreneurial vibe and spirit there. Just cutting that loose. Who cares if I lose the pension on other things? I got to chart my own course and do my own thing, so that's fantastic. Well, as we dive in here, what are some things about PR that brands need to know that they probably don't? Because my perspective is, and we were talking about this before we hit record, I think most brands, most brands in the 10 million to a hundred or a couple hundred million are just forgetting about pr. They're sleeping on it. It's not something they're fully leveraging. So what do we need to know about PR that we don't know right now? And

Gloria:

It's so funny because brands who have made it to that level, it is so easy for them to implement PR more than anything else because they have the traction, they have all of the website assets, and most of what I teach, my founders are way more beginner than that. So if they can do it, so can the other companies. I will say that traditionally we're taught, okay, well if you want an agency, and it's so exorbitantly expensive in New York, it's about five to 10 grand a month for six months, no guarantees and a minimum contract. So I understand that if you do play it that route, if you're a founder, you're looking at the ROI, you're like, maybe I should just pour this into ads 60,

Brett:

60 grand. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. I don't know

Gloria:

When I know I totally, and so what I'm doing here is how can we disrupt that industry? Because here's the thing, if you keep paying an agency, the moment you stop paying them, they walk away with the relationships. How can we break that mold and take it? I think we're not really taught that as founders because again, it's been very gate kept. Very few people are learning how to take it, but obviously after listening to this episode, it will have some actionable tips. But PR is the only activity for me that out of all of your marketing, it checks all of the boxes. So it checks the boxes of traffic, it checks the boxes of SEO because you get those powerful backlinks from a high domain authority website. And then it also gives you that trust, which all three things, it's very hard to get with social media or ads alone. And my favorite thing is I always say it's not about one or the other. It's about how can you leverage your time? Because if you can get onto one gift guide, then you can repost it onto your social media. You can repurpose that for an ad as seen in, and that's to me a way more powerful way to do your content.

Brett:

Just to piggyback on that last part really quickly, it's something we've done for years and years and it's nothing new, but a few of our clients, one that's an automotive client and one that was a skincare client, we would take clips for when they were on A, B, C or Fox News or something. Take those clips and now you can run those in paid ads. You can put those on product detail pages. You can really lean into some of those press releases in a major way. And yeah, another one of my favorite definitions for marketing is marketing is really the transfer of confidence or the transfer of trust As the brand, I have total confidence in my product, but as the shopper, as the prospect don't have confidence. So marketing is just that transfer of confidence. And I think you could argue that the few things that do that faster or better than pr.

And so yeah, I just think it's a missed opportunity and something that we all need to lean into. I think one of the misconceptions I had years ago was, well, if you want pr, yeah, you either talk to massive agency and pay through the nose and hope or you just wait, just wait and hope somebody reaches out to you, right? Hope that a reporter reaches out to you. But really the news cycle is 24 7 now it has been that way for quite some time. So news outlets are kind of desperate for stories. They're looking for angles, they're looking for content. And so if you package this correctly and you approach the right people, it's probably not that hard, right?

Gloria:

No, it's really not. I mean, we have hundreds of founders who are literally solopreneurs doing this. And so imagine if you had the scale and the resources of your audience, how much further they can go. So I will say that because the industry, the PR industry has gate kept, it made it seem like, well, we cannot do our own pr. When in reality, journalists want to interview indie brands. They want to interview not just the Unilevers of the world, because put it this way, if they were only featuring Fortune 1000 companies, they would lose their credibility very quickly. They need to feature new brands. That's how they maintain their journalism integrity. So you're actually doing them a favor. And I will say that with the new cycle ramping up more ferociously than ever, they are churning out these stories like no other. I actually have a lot of journalists who write gift guides coming into my program to teach my students, and they all say Q4, we are working overtime.

I am tasked with writing one gift guide per day. And that's one journalist. And if one gift guide has 10 products, you can just do the math on that. So there's no better way, especially in Q4, to capitalize on the fact that they are monitoring their inboxes like a hawk. And it's your time to put your name in the hat. You just need to know what to say and who to say it to. And so my whole ethos is like, yes, PR is painted as this complex thing that you need privilege and access to pay for, but how do I make it accessible? I make it accessible by really making it simple. And PR is really at its core, writing a good pitch and sending it to the right person. That's it. And if you can put the tune two together, you can repeat it as a system in your business where you monitor the inbox, where you are sending it from your inbox, and that way you don't need to depend on someone else because then you own the relationships.

Brett:

So we're getting close to, we're in Q4. Holiday shopping is about to ramp up as we're recording this. So let's talk gift guides really quickly. You mentioned that now a couple of times. It's a really popular thing for the media to create. It's a great way for them to drive traffic to their platforms. And everybody loves gift guides. We're all looking for ideas. So I'm an e-commerce brand. Let's say that I sell apparel. How should I approach this? And so what am I saying and who am I saying it to try to get my product featured in the gift guide?

Gloria:

Yeah. So I will say with any physical product pitch, you're always going to have your gift guide, which is more product focus, and you have your evergreen angles about larger trends that maybe positions you as a founder. So we have someone who is in our program who makes apparel, and so she got interviewed in Vogue and it's about the future of sustainable fashion. Now she can still take her same company, take one product, and then repurpose the for gift guide. So those two angles simultaneously will always exist, but at the time of recording, like you said, Q4 is really about those product roundups. Get on a list, link it back to your website. So when I think about gift guides, it's really important for you to first figure out, out of all the products that I have, if you have more than one, which one is the best fit for this season?

Here's the thing, you don't want to send an order form to the journalist. You don't want to sell to the journalist. You want to solve a very quick problem for them, which is I'm compiling something for various gift guide categories. How is this going to fit? So for example, the main gift guide categories are gifts for him, gifts for her, gifts for mom, gifts for dad, gifts for kids, gifts for all the ones that you read, right? There's also budget friendly gifts, stalking sufferers, travel gifts. I could go on and on and on. And so knowing that there's so many different buckets, it's your job to first figure out which of my products fits in that bucket? Is it a luxury item? Is it a stocking sufferer? Is it good for travel? Do you have any winter bundles for skincare? If you make apparels, what's really good for this cold weather season? So pitching with the season is the number one key to getting featured because that way you're constantly refreshing your pitch so that you're not pitching sweatpants in the summer. That's the number one thing.

Brett:

Yeah, it's really great. And I love the way you position that because really good marketing and what we're doing, whether it's with our ads, our product detail pages is we're helping someone solve a problem or we're helping them take advantage of an opportunity. It's aspirational. You can look great, feel great in these close, or we're solving this problem you may be facing. Same is true when you're reaching out to a reporter. It's just that the problem you're solving is not the product delivering benefit. They need content, they need good recommendations, they need something they can plug into that gifts for him, gifts for her, gifts for kids, gifts for stalking, stuffers, whatever. And so you've got to kind of package it in that way. So totally makes sense. So I'm selling apparel. I then I guess first begin to think about, okay, who is this a good gift for? And then from that I start to craft my message.

Gloria:

Yeah, so I love what you said about your marketing pitch, which we're so good at as founders is fundamentally different than your pitch to the media. Why? Because the journalist is not ever going to buy from you. So you have to take a different frame of mind. I always say, you got to take off your marketing hat and stop talking about the benefits and features and start talking about the season and who it's good for. So if you can do that, then it becomes so much easier because what we don't want is for you to pitch a journalist with your order form and benefits, and they say, well, we have an entire ads department who will be happy to take your money. Exactly. We don't want that. So how do we repurpose that pitch? And it's not that hard

Brett:

Pitches incorrectly, and you're getting sent to the ad department.

Gloria:

Exactly. They're happy to take your money. So we're not talking about benefits and features. Yes, we will in the pitch, but you're not leading with that. You're leading with the insight, the season, the problem, the trend. For example, remember the show White Lotus on HBO O?

Brett:

I've heard of it. Yeah, I've never seen

Gloria:

It. So any of these pop culture things, right? A great way to pitch. We have a swimwear founder, and it was like the pitch I wrote for her was How to pick the best swimsuit for your white Lotus Italian vacation. And people are going to Taylor Swift concert. So if you make something that would be perfect for that, it's like top 10 accessories for your next Taylor Swift concert. Do you see where I'm getting at? Absolute. It's like you're leading with the trend this season, and so it's still your product. So that's the biggest thing that you need to do. And then I have my CPR framework, which is my own framework that I came up with from pitching and being rejected thousands of times. I picked on up on a pattern. How do I get that person who doesn't know who the hell I am to say yes, tell me more. And the pitch, whether it's written or verbal, usually has these three components. So C stands for credibility, P stands for point of view, R stands for relevance. And when you put that in a pitch, it's really solid. So let's bring it, let's break it down.

Brett:

And you lead with credibility, I guess. Well, I don't want to get ahead of you, but why do you lead with credibility?

Gloria:

So I actually don't lead with credibility. That's just the way to remember it phonetically,

Brett:

But

Gloria:

I actually do it reverse. So I actually start with the relevance. Why? Because you want to grab their attention at the get go. And what is news if it's not relevant? Totally. So the beginning of your pitch should say something like, as your readers are looking for cold weather skin solutions this December, do you see how that's relevant?

Brett:

Totally, totally.

Gloria:

Or as busy moms are looking for back to school pencil cases. So that's the relevance piece. And then you go, so the point of view in CPR is usually three bullet points. Why? Because it makes the email look better and it doesn't turn them off with a bunch of texts. So it's usually three insights, three do's and don'ts, three ways that your product solves that problem better than anyone else. Three unique points. And then you conclude with very simple credibility, which is like, I am a mom and I figured this out, and now we've scaled our business and customers love us because of X, Y, Z, or we've been featured and you don't have to be featured, but it's really the least important part. And then you conclude with, I'm happy to send over some more high res photos. What I like to do is include A URL.

Instead of putting high resolution photos, it's going to cost spam. I say, put one normal photo, but then have the rest be a URL that links to other things how they can find out more. If you're pitching a gift guide, it's very important, three things, your subject line, your subject line is what gets open or not open. So your subject line needs to read almost like an article title. So instead of saying SO'S brand pitch winter gift guide, that means absolutely nothing. It needs to read why this eco-friendly Australian sheep wool sock is perfect for socking stuffer or whatever that is. And then you go into the CPR method. And so that's kind of the general structure of how it is when you're talking about your product, when you start with the relevance and you introduce why your product is solving that seasonal problem, you always want to put in where it's available. Is it at Marshall's, is it on Amazon? Is it only on your website? And you want to put the price point immediately and then you want to put where it ships to. So all of those things is going to help the journalist decide where and when to put it. So that's like non-negotiable when you're trying to pitch for a gift guide, is having those specifics.

Brett:

Super interesting. And really as I'm listening to this and trying to imagine this email in my mind, if I'm a reporter and you've done this properly, I could almost take exactly what you email me and just run with that. You've essentially done all the hard work for me. Maybe I want to reach out and confirm things or do, but you've done most of the heavy lifting for me.

Gloria:

That's exactly it. Look, this is an unnatural act, so don't feel like, oh, why didn't I, it's like we're not taught this, right? So don't feel bad that you haven't done this. It's just that the industry has gay kept it from us. And so we actually had people use the CPR method to get into Oprah's favorite things, buzzfeed, Vogue, allure, and even use it to get into retailers and wholesalers. So the CPR pitch is a way to have a value driven conversation with someone who has never heard of you, and how do you get them to quickly respond? One thing I will say is that the CPR R pitch is not writing the article for them. So you don't leave that to the journalist. The journalist knows what their editorial calendar is and where to fit your story. So don't think that you're writing this whole article and no, you're just simply offering a point of view that's perfect for this season. And the whole point of the pitch is to get them to respond, yes, I would like more information. No, this is not a good fit for me. And so that takes away the pressure of everything. It just has a very simple, simple goal and just don't overthink it.

Brett:

Got it. And it's really valuable. Yeah, we may be tempted to put on our writer hat, and I got to write the intro to the article and the that's not your job. Your job is to make this very clear, very easy to understand your credibility, your point of view, and the relevancy and working all that in. So totally makes sense. How do you recommend, so we've got our copy for the product on our product detail pages and things like that. How are you modifying that copy to fit bullet points that you're sending in this email?

Gloria:

So the bullet points are a little bit more subjective, so it could be point of view on, so if you make something that's completely unique, so I'll give you an example. We have someone who in Canada works with aboriginal native women tribes and they make beaver for hand warmers. So it's from beaver fur and means that it's, you keep it for life. It's not those ones that you throw away, right? So because it's really unique, the point of view, the three bullet points are like why the beaver first solution is better than the traditional ones that you get at your ski shop, right? One, it's sustainable. Two, it lasts long. That's what I mean by the point of view.

Brett:

That's so great. What can we expect then? So if you craft this email properly, how many of these do we need to send out to hopefully get featured somewhere? What are you seeing in terms of success rate and how much time do we need to put into this to make it work?

Gloria:

Yeah, I've had people get a response within 24 hours. I think when you first start, it's really about a volume game. So you might pitch to a wide variety of journalists, but then you always want to highlight your top 15 to 20 outlets that will move the needle for you, whether it's a refinery or a pop sugar or even outdoor sporting goods. So I always say, first you cast a wide net, but then for those 10 to 15 journalists, you really want to build a personal relationship by just personalizing the first line of the email. So it might be something like, I loved your coverage last year in Sporting Good magazine about the best fly fishing gear for dads. Are you doing it for this year? So you see how it chosen that you're actually read their article. And for those 15 journalists, you really want to cultivate relationship by engaging with their content because they're writers too. It's so common on their LinkedIn comment, on their Instagram, use social media and say, I loved your article, right? Stroke their ego a little bit. And so that's going to help you build that relationship kind of like a customer where you increase the touch points and they get familiar with you because they're seeing your name in your brand.

Brett:

How are we finding these contacts? We're building our list of top 10 to 15 media outlets that will move the needle for us. How would you recommend we do that? We may all be tempted to reach out to Fox News or CNN or something like that, but that's probably not the place to start. How do we build that list and then, yeah, walk us through that.

Gloria:

So that's a really good question. So remember I said PR is very simple. It's writing a good pitch and sending it to the right person. So with the CPR method, we talked about how to write a pitch. Now let's move on to who do we send it to. It's not going to be info@buzzfeed.com or Media Forbes. It's going to go into an internet black hole. It's also not going to be the editor in chief of Vogue because they're busy doing their speaking tour. So you want to find out who is that specific writer who writes your beat or industry topic? Is it the health and wellness reporter? Is it the sustainability person? Is it the person that covers tech gadgets? So for a lot of gift guides, you're going to look for someone that covers your industry and also the commerce or shopping writer. Those are the people who are responsible for conglomerating those shopping guides and product lists.

So that's who you want to look for. Now in my program, we have a database of a hundred thousand journalists across every industry, but you can start to do it in your own way and start to compile your own media list. And you can do it very simply by typing into the Google search bar, Google News alert and Google will create an alert where any digital article that's being published will be sent to your inbox and you can click on that article that's about your industry and copy and paste their name and email, which is public information by the way, and start to fill it into an ever expanding Excel spreadsheet. So that's kind of your own way of doing it. You can also sign up for a service called haro, which is bought by another company now. But you can type in HARO, help a reporter out, and every day it pings you with the 200 or 300 inquiries for journalists wanting to interview a specific person.

And if you fit the bill, then use a CPR R method to reply. We had someone just using Harrow and she got onto seven different pieces of media like Wall Street Journal and PopSugar this year alone. And then there's also hashtags you can follow. So on LinkedIn and Instagram, you can follow the hashtag journal request. And so that is when journalists are looking for a specific person to interview. So these are all the grassroots way that you can start to autopopulate that. But you want to have a good size media list. You want to have at least 50 journalists, and then out of those 50, your top 50, that'll really move the needle for you.

Brett:

Yeah, it's really great because it is a numbers game. You can't expect to reach out to two media outlets or two reporters and get the ball rolling. It is a numbers game, and so play accordingly. We talked about gift giving guides, and I love that angle, but you also talked about founder stories. I think that's interesting. I also want to talk about that in a minute. Let's talk about product launches because that's something our bigger brands, they're always launching new products or new lines of products. So I've got my haircare, now I'm launching my sun care, now I'm launching oral care or something like that. So how do you recommend approaching this? I'm sure it's a lot of the same frameworks and stuff, but how do I approach this if it's a new product launch?

Gloria:

So the way I think about product launches is that it's doing pr, but with a specific time sensitive call to action. So for the journalist, you're saying, I am launching this on this date. And so what you want to do is you want to create a very well-written press release, and you can see all the list of my press releases on gloria Chou pr.com/services. There's a very methodical way of writing it, but you always want to say that you're the first to do something right, because newsworthy, so you might not be the first to do X, y, and Z, but you might be the first to do X, Y, and Z in this way. So see how you can wordsmith it so that it's really punchy at the top. And so for example, I worked with a seven figure electric flosser company, and they're not the first electric flosser, but they're the first to use X, Y, Z materials to guarantee a full mouth clean in under 60 seconds. And you see how that's really the headline and the sub-headline. So I like press releases, but I don't like it when people are just putting out press releases every other week. It's kind of a waste of money. See how you can couple two or three different things? Maybe you have a product launch and then you also have a new board member,

Or maybe you won an award and then you're giving back to charity or whatever that is. And the worst thing I think, and we're not really taught this, is we're just taught, oh, well issue a press release and just hope and pray that someone will respond and it just doesn't work that way. I actually use press releases as an incentive, kind of like a bait, if you will, to get the journalist to respond in X amount of days. So instead of just putting the press release on the wire, you're writing an email using the CPR method and saying, Hey, we know that you cover consumer electronics. We've invented this really cool dental tool, especially as we get into health and wellness season for the whole family to enjoy dental health is linked to heart diseases and brain health. There's growing number of research to say that it's really, that's why we've made it very easy and under 60 seconds for anyone to clean their teeth. We've also made it so that it's good for people who have dexterity issues kind of go into that. We're going live with the press release announcement in two weeks or seven days. So let me know if you'd be interested in learning more. I've attached the draft of the press release below. I'm happy to chat. So do you see how that's a stronger call to action? You're basically using your launch as a conversation starter,

So you want to do that before you just put the press release live onto the Newswire. And so for all of my clients, I do this kind of two step process with them.

Brett:

So that lets them know, hey, this is going to happen. Almost some kind of credibility mixed in there that this is going live in one week or two weeks.

Gloria:

Also, I'm going live with or without you.

Brett:

Yeah, but then this also makes them say, okay, well I'd kind of rather be first, or I want to be early in the game, not picking it up once it hits the wire type

Gloria:

Of thing. Yeah, I got my client Forbes within one week because they just want it to be the first to break it, but you have to make it exciting for them. So that's where the pitch writing comes in. So I think this is one of the things that a lot of people aren't taught. They're just publish a press release, but you are wasting on a very precious opportunity, which is that time sensitive call to action.

Brett:

Super smart. So are you always wrapping multiple things into one press release or sometimes is it just a product launch?

Gloria:

This is a very good question. I would say it's somewhat subjective. It depends on the newsworthiness of the announcement, if you will. If your startup and you secured funding, that's important because every milestone on Google, you want to put it there as a part of your journey for your investors. But if it's something like you have a new board member maybe, and then you're also partnering with a charity, you could couple that into one and there is a way to write it. So I will say if you have multiple things you want to announce, get out a piece of paper and write in the hierarchy of what is the most important, and then see how you can couple it into one press release. Because in the press release, I've written many funding announcements about how they've secured, but then in the body of the press release, we're saying by Q4 of next year, we plan to release X, Y, and Z features. So do you see this kind of a look ahead date to get people excited?

Brett:

Yeah, totally Cool. Totally cool. Now what about if you kind of talked about founder stories, and I know this would apply if it's a new company, you're solving a new problem type of thing, but it's something to be said here, even if you're a little bit established, how can you take that founder story angle and turn that into a press release?

Gloria:

So the founder story is important, and you can put it even in your gift guide pitch, but it needs to be under two sentences. So if you're pitching yes, if you have an interesting founder story, put it in there. If it's one or two sentences now in your press release, I usually put it in about section of the press release on the bottom, how was it founded? Or maybe the last paragraph founded by two research chemists or whatever that is. If you're making a skincare product, I wouldn't say that that is the most important part because your press release is not your autobiography. It's a very time specific snapshot of something that you're announcing. So the purpose of the press release is not to announce your story. So the story will go into the press release, but you're not going to lead with that. The headline of the press release, and I do this on my VIP day, but the headline is the what and the sub-headline is the how. So that's how you can start to figure out what is the framework of what you're trying to say.

Brett:

So good. So I love the example of the oral care product. You talked about the electronic flosser, other examples that you can talk about. I just think as someone here, as an example, kind of triggers additional thoughts.

Gloria:

So for press release, I've run a lot for products that are white labeled. So we have someone who she makes a 24 karat facial massager tool that also is like solar charge, right?

Brett:

It's

Gloria:

Not her proprietary product, but then she white labels and stuff. So in her press release, we couldn't say that she was the first to do this. It's not her invention, but she is the first Filipino owned skincare brand or the first one. So it's like how can you keep wordsmithing that to say that you're the first, and let's be honest, unless it's a groundbreaking invention, you're not going to be the first but

Brett:

Not be the first anyway, right?

Gloria:

Yeah, everything is a remix, but then you still want to keep just finessing that headline in the sub headline to make it super concise and specific to that right out of the bat, we know that it's newsworthy because you are the first or the only to solve this problem maybe for this specific demographic.

Brett:

I know from a career in sales and sales related things that it's very rare to send one email and then stuff just happens, right? One email and now the reporter is jumping all over themselves to try to get you on and interviewed and stuff. How do we follow up and how much should we follow up after we send that email?

Gloria:

Yeah, I mean follow up is absolutely key because remember, they're getting a lot of emails and they just need to be reminded. And I think a lot of times, because again, this is an unnatural act, a lot of founders who are doing incredible things, they send out first email and they go run and hide in the bathroom. And so the journalist is not monitoring like, oh, this person followed up with me. How dare they

Brett:

Actually

Gloria:

Depend on you to follow up? And it's really just about top of mind. But I will give you one tip is that before you send out any emails, please install an email tracking device. So if it's being open or not. So then you don't have to make a drama in your head about, oh, this journalist hates me. It's like, well, no, they actually just never open it because it could be a deliverability issue, it could be an out of office issue. So let's for the right problem. Now, if the email tracker is telling you that they're opening it multiple times, it means that they like the story. They just don't have a place for it right now in their editorial calendar. But journalists, what they do is they have a very meticulous way of filing and foldering their inboxes so that anytime that they're tasked with something, they're going to go back and type that keyword.

So that's why I always say you have to pitch early and often so that you're at least in the running when they do search back into their inbox. Now if they are multiple times, I'm just working with someone who makes a real kids' kitchen for children. It's a beautifully designed like toy real kitchen, but for kids, and she said that the pitch that we wrote for her got opened 16 times or something like that. So it means that the journalist really likes it. And so that's when you go in and you really engage with the person's content. And so it might be commenting on an Instagram post, it might be resharing one of their stories. It's kind of like how you would nurture a lead when you know that it's kind of a hot lead. It's the same way you're building a relationship with that journalist.

Brett:

Sorry, I muted. There was a train. Totally makes sense. So as we're looking to leverage our time, whether we're the ones executing this plan or we've got a team member that's doing it for us, what are some tools that we can use that makes this process easier?

Gloria:

So the email tracking device, right? I like Chrome because I've heard that Outlook doesn't have the best deliverability. So I like Chrome and I like to schedule, send my emails in a campaign. I use MailTrack do io, which it's like, okay, it's like middle of the road, it's not too expensive. And it just gives you data on whether or not it's been and open. Obviously the Google News alert is really important. You want to have that one tip is that if you do want to take this in-house and for a lot of your audience, they do have a team, it's really helpful to give your PR person, it could be an intern or marketing assistant, like the password to an email that's different from your customer service emails. So it could be like a media ad or a team ad or just something, and then they can kind of own that inbox and just kind of keep that separate.

Brett:

Super smart. Super smart. Well, Gloria, this has been fantastic. Any final tips? I want to allow people to connect with you through socials, and I know you've got a course and some other great stuff, but any final tips or anything that you wanted to chat about that we didn't related to pr?

Gloria:

So I think we all know this, but everything you want is on the other side of the send button. And so we pour so much money in social media and ads and there is room for that, right? But why not just a reality, a little bit of that to do something that has a crazy potential upside.

So it's really about working smarter and not harder. And here's the thing, your business needs you to be. Its number one advocate. I cannot tell you how many founders come to me and join my program after they paid $40,000 for an agency. So it's not about not working with an agency, but it's about knowing how the process works so that if something happens that they don't deliver, then you are not stuck at square one with no contacts because at the end of the day, it's about building those contacts with the journalist. And so my program gives you the database, it gives you what to say, and then you can kind of repeat it. So you can find me on Instagram at gloria Chou pr Gloria, C-H-O-U-P-R. And I have a free masterclass that actually outlines word for word from subject line down to the last sentence, a pitch I wrote in the CPR method that got someone featured like 15 times. And you can watch that for free@gloriaChoupr.com slash masterclass. And if you DM me on Instagram, the word pitch, I will give you a pitching freebie so that you can get started.

Brett:

Nice. And then did I hear, are you on LinkedIn as well?

Gloria:

Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn as well. I'm mainly on Instagram. That's kind of where you can get the fastest response. But I also check my LinkedIn. Yes.

Brett:

Got it. So check out Instagram for sure. And it's so true. You don't get what you don't ask for in life. You don't get necessarily what you deserve. You get what you negotiate and you get what you actively pursue. I'm fired up, man. I'm excited about pr. Like I said, I think this is a missing piece that great brands need to leverage. It will make other efforts better. You can use it to leverage your ads and you can use it to make clients stickier. And there's so many ways you can use this. And so Gloria, love this content. Thank you so much. We'll link to everything in the show notes, but go check it out. So before you hire a PR firm, talk to Gloria first and hey, I think it makes sense. Send someone through the free masterclass, do the paid class or whatever. That's probably better than paying for a high priced firm for most brands. So Gloria, thank you so much. This was fantastic and thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show? If you have not done so? Please leave that review on iTunes. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

‍

No one knows more about eCommerce growth than my friend Ezra Firestone. Arguably, no one is a more interesting interview than Ezra either. This episode does NOT disappoint. Ezra bootstrapped growth for Boom from $0 to $40mill + per year. He also recently bought another high-profile eComm brand (more on that in the show).This episode is straight fire. Here’s a look at what we dive into:

• How Ezra is approaching email marketing and email list growth in 2022. I’m guessing you’re missing his email strategy - even if you consider yourself an email marketing pro.
• How BOOM is approaching front-end offers.
• Why you should consider inventing a holiday and how BOOM has done that.
• Growing your SMS list.
• Plus MUCH, much more!

‍

Mentioned in this Episode:

Ezra Firestone

   - LinkedIn

   - Instagram

   - Twitter

   - Facebook

BOOM! by Cindy Joseph‍

oVertone‍

Zipify Pages‍

Smart Marketer‍

Blue Ribbon Mastermind‍

Klaviyo‍

Postscript‍

Attentive‍

Dan Kennedy‍

Jay Abraham‍

Native Deodorant‍

Northbeam‍

John Grimshaw‍

Molly Pittman‍

Train My Traffic Person

‍

Transcript:

Brett Curry:

Welcome to the Spicy Curry Podcast, where we explore hot takes in e-commerce and digital marketing. We feature some of the brightest guests with the spiciest perspectives on what it takes to grow your business online. Season one is built on the old business adage that it really takes three things to succeed. One, have something good to say. Two, say it well. And three, say it often.

Brett Curry:

Today, my guest is none other than the e-commerce legend himself, Ezra Firestone. If you're serious about growing your e-commerce business, then you have to pay attention to Ezra. And arguably, there's not a more interesting interview than Ezra Firestone. He bootstrapped Boom by Cindy Joseph from zero to now, $40 million a year in growth. He now owns and operates Overtone, a $25 million a year e-commerce brand. He also co-founded Zipify Pages, Smart Marketer, and he's the mastermind behind my favorite e-commerce mastermind, Blue Ribbon.

Brett Curry:

This is a wide ranging discussion. We talk about things like cold plunges and samurai swords. But yes of course, we spend most of our time talking about e-commerce growth strategies. We look at Ezra's really unique approach to email marketing, and how much of his ad budget he's dedicating to growing his email list. We also look at SMS marketing. And we look at how to invent a holiday, and what that looks like. And then we're also looking at how Boom is crafting and creating front end offers. You won't want to miss a minute of this show. I hope you enjoy my interview with Ezra Firestone.

Brett Curry:

The Spicy Curry Podcast is brought to you by OMG Commerce, Attentive, OneClickUpsell, Zipify Pages, and Payability. All right, I am absolutely stoked out of my mind for this next guest, and personal friend of mine. We do some work together. I always count it a joy when I get to talk to this guest. And so, to have this uninterrupted time to dive in deep on strategies, it's going to be amazing, and I'm glad you get to listen in. And so if I look at, man, if you need tactics, if you need strategies, if you need help for how to take your e-commerce business to the next level, and if you need to get a little bit spicy, you need Ezra Firestone.

Brett Curry:

And so today I've got the man, the myth, the legend. He's flexing if you're watching the video. Got Ezra Firestone on the call. We're talking about eight top strategies to just blow up your business this year in a good way. We may not get to all eight, we'll see how it goes. But with that intro, Ezra, what's up, man? How you doing? And welcome to the show.

Ezra Firestone:

Brett, the Fury Curry, I'm fresh out of the cold plunge, dog. One minute, 30 seconds, 32 degrees. My whole body is red, I'm shivering, I'm shaking, we're podcasting. Happy to be here man, thanks.

Brett Curry:

It's hilarious. You hopped on the call and I was like, "Oh no, something's wrong with Ezra. He just doesn't look right." It's like, well, you just got out of a 32 degree bathtub. Of course, your body's in shock. But I appreciate taking the time to do this. And man, it's just always, always fun to chat.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah, man. And just watching your journey, I seen you come up in the game from back in the day, when you had an SEO agency. You know?

Brett Curry:

Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

From way back. I don't even know if it was 2008, 2009, it was a long time ago. 2010, whatever it was. And then to watch you rise to be one of the most prominent voices in the e-commerce world, and also to have a top 2% advertising agency, maybe you guys are top 1% at this point, I mean, you run all of our stuff. So it's been fun to watch your journey and just happy to be on the podcast.

Brett Curry:

Dude, thanks. It's been so fun to grow. I credit you and your community with a lot of that growth. And your approach to having fun, and doing what's right, and being extremely successful, and that blend, is awesome. Your motto, for those that don't know, is "Serve the world unselfishly and profit." And actually before we get into tactics and strategies for this year, and there's some amazing ones, can you talk a little bit about that for those that are new to the world of Ezra Firestone?

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a description-

Brett Curry:

... Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

I think it's a description, not a statement. It's how I have seen things work. That when you are in a role of service, unselfishly with the goal of serving, you do profit by the very nature of serving. And it may not be monetarily. Maybe it's spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically, energetically. But my goal is to serve. And I find joy in the act of service. I think there's a lot of value, and fun, and enjoyment, and good. And also in business, if you can truly serve a community, you will be profitable. And so I think that's just a description of how it goes. And also it's what I'm looking to do. I'm looking to serve the world unselfishly and also profit. I want to take care of my family. I want to take care of my community. I want to put resource towards causes in the world that I find noble. And I need fucking money to do that. Right?

Brett Curry:

Exactly. Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

And the way going to get that money is by helping a group of people out with solutions to problems they have.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, I love that. If you look at, what is leadership, what does it mean to lead a company or to be a CEO, it's really serving. Serving your team more than commanding and dictating.

Ezra Firestone:

100%.

Brett Curry:

And how do build a brand, how do you build a business? It's serving a community. It's serving the needs and meeting the needs of buyers. And so, yeah. I love it. So it's really, really just-

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah. And then just because you're serving a group, doesn't mean you can't sell them stuff.

Brett Curry:

Exactly.

Ezra Firestone:

Selling them stuff is also serving them.

Brett Curry:

Because people want to buy stuff, right?

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah.

Brett Curry:

They want to have those needs met. And retail therapy is a thing too. So one of the greatest acts of service you can do, is sell a good product to the right person.

Ezra Firestone:

I'll tell you what dude. You and I both know that this last six months have been the most intense and stressful on the personal side of my life, with some health problems of some family members. And I done fucking discovered stress shopping, bro. I had never done that. I'm not a guy who buys shit that I just don't need or want. I'm willing to buy things. I have a lot of money, and I didn't come from money. I now have more money than basically everyone that I know, and I'm not against purchasing things. But I usually purchase things that I really like. I'll buy a nice espresso machine, or I'll buy a nice skateboard.

Brett Curry:

Which I've had espresso from that espresso machine. And you pull a mean shot of espresso, my friend.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah. I will spend money happily on things that are enjoyable and that I will use, but I don't just buy frivolously, until now, dude. I bought six pairs of the same Chelsea boot. When I turned around, I was like, "What? I have lost my mind, dude." This is stress shopping.

Brett Curry:

Why did I buy this?

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah.

Brett Curry:

I think one time I was on a call with you and you just recently bought like a samurai sword or something. I don't think it was actually a samurai sword, but it was some kind of sword.

Ezra Firestone:

A katana. Yeah, it was a Japanese katana. I use it to chop wood for my sweat lodge. So that was actually a useful tool. It's good for chopping kindling.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. That's awesome, man. Super fun. So people are buying right now. The economy's pretty hot, and certainly there are some issues too. But people are buying stuff. So let's dive in. You recently wrote a blog post, which I'm going to link to, so you can see this in the show notes, talking about eight top growth strategies. And first of all, for those that don't know the journey, talk about Boom by Cindy Joseph and how it's grown.

Ezra Firestone:

(singing)

Brett Curry:

Because you guys are set to do about 40 million this year, right?

Ezra Firestone:

So I started this brand in 2010. Took me to 2014 to make my first million dollar a year in total revenue. By 2016, I was doing 17 million. This last year, I did 42. This year I think I'll do 47. Top line revenue at about a 25% EBIDA margin, so maybe making six or 7 million a year in profit on that.

Brett Curry:

Which is amazing. Amazing.

Ezra Firestone:

I got about 30 employees at that company. I also own Zipify Apps, about a $10 million a year software company. Also a couple million bucks in profit on that, maybe about 60 employees there. And I just bought a company called Overtone Color, which has about 20 team members. It'll do about 25, 30 million this year. And I got Smart Marketer too. And I'm just a guy. I didn't go to college, I have no special skills, other than that I'm a good communicator and I'm willing to put my foot down and do the work, and ask for help when I need it. And I think my story shows that if... I'm a complete failure in the eyes of the school system. They labeled me a dumb kid, and someone who was not going to be successful. And I think for anybody who doesn't fit into the mold, who maybe is dyslexic, or maybe has some reason why the general society is telling them that they can't be successful, the internet opens up an opportunity for us.

Ezra Firestone:

And there's skills that we can develop. Advertising, direct response marketing, landing page optimization, copywriting, product development, podcasting, social media, that can support us in taking care of our families. And I didn't come from resource, and so I wanted to create that. And I've been able to, and I've been doing it now for 17 years. I got pretty fucking good at it. I made every mistake you could make. I didn't pay my taxes, I did all the stupid you can do. But I did it when I was younger, and earlier in my... And I didn't have podcasts like yours to learn from. I had a bunch of creepy dudes on an internet forum who were shilling fucking gambling and porn. That was when I got into the game.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Online marketing was a bit of a dark place back in those early days.

Ezra Firestone:

You didn't want to say you were an internet marketer. It wasn't good.

Brett Curry:

No, no, that was not prestigious. No one looked at that highly. For sure.

Ezra Firestone:

So yeah. So I've been doing it a long time now, I'm really good at it. And I've been talking about it since about 2011. I was one of the first people to start blogging about e-commerce. And by the very nature of being one of the first, I became popular. Not that I was anything special than anyone else, but I was the first to do it, and so I got real popular. And I've stayed in that space of documenting my journey. And I got a bunch of people who think it's cool, and follow what I do. And I'm pretty good at it, you know?

Brett Curry:

Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

And I've been able to successfully train and educate, and bring up in the game, thousands and thousands of internet entrepreneurs over the years. You being one of them who I've impacted.

Brett Curry:

Big time.

Ezra Firestone:

Not that I did anything for you, other than show you what I was doing. So yeah, so I like talking about this stuff.

Brett Curry:

It's been so amazing to watch that progression as well, and getting to see behind the scenes, seeing you operate with your team. So I've been to your house and I've hung out with the inner circle of Smart Marketer and Boom. And of course we were on calls, and our agency serves you and stuff. So I've seen you in a lot of different capacities. And man, you're the same leader behind the scenes as you are on stage. You care about people on stage or one on one. You're extremely smart and strategic, and you get marketing, and you understand human in nature, and you take massive action. All kinds of stuff we can break down. So it's been really fun to observe that and get the front row seat of that as well.

Ezra Firestone:

I can also do a cool poker chip trick. Look at this.

Brett Curry:

Is that right? Oh, look at that.

Ezra Firestone:

Wait.

Brett Curry:

Look at that.

Ezra Firestone:

Hold on. Damn, that was not cool. I dropped it. Hold on.

Brett Curry:

We're going to try this again. So if you're listening, just take my word for it. He's a great poker chip-

Ezra Firestone:

My hands are frozen. My hands are frozen. We should probably get into tactics.

Brett Curry:

Do not attempt a poker chip trick out of a cold plunge.

Ezra Firestone:

People are going to be like, "Enough of this bullshit, dude. You should talk about some tactics." We should talk about some strategies.

Brett Curry:

Exactly. So here we go. So let's dive in. One thing that we've seen you guys operate on, we're running this on YouTube for you, but you're buying more email leads. So talk about that. So this is top strategy number one, buying more email leads. What does that look like, and why?

Ezra Firestone:

Dude, nobody's talking about email. Everybody's like "SMS, video ads." This and that. Well guess what has always been since I've been in the game, about 25 to 40% of my business? Literally since '05, dude. Emails.

Brett Curry:

Email. Email.

Ezra Firestone:

I've been sending motherfucking emails since 2005. And it is to this day, it'll be 36% of Boom's total revenue this year.

Brett Curry:

It's crazy.

Ezra Firestone:

And nobody-

Brett Curry:

Email touches 36% of all purchases through Boom.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah, it's last click, dude. It's last click for 36% of my purchases.

Brett Curry:

It's awesome.

Ezra Firestone:

So why would I not be putting so much energy in growing that list? Nobody does it. Everybody just runs top of funnel video ads, conversion ads, and they hope that when somebody comes to their website, their onsite popup, or their card abandonment, or their exit intent, are going to capture the email lead for them. Great, do that. But also, you know what I'm doing? Gated content. I'm doing giveaways. I'm doing all kinds of different straight up lead generation campaigns. One of my best ones, is we use these things called pre-sell articles, which are basically articles that are story-based, like, "Five makeup tips for older women." Or "Seven makeup tips for women who wear glasses." Or "How to overcome perfectionism in your fifties." Or whatever kind of content that our community is interested in, that leads back to our products.

Ezra Firestone:

And we use those in our email auto responders, we run ads to them, we mail them to our email list. We use them everywhere. At every stage of the sales process. What we also do, is we gate them. So we put an opt-in front of it, and it says, "Hey, enter email address here to get our five makeup tips for women over 50." We run ads to that with a conversion objective for the lead event, the lead event fires on the thank you page. They enter their email address, guess where they get dropped? On the same pre-sell that I'm running at the top of the funnel.

Ezra Firestone:

But now we have their email lead, and we put them on a automation sequence, to warm them up and try to sell them. And if they don't buy, we put them on our bucket list. I also run giveaways every six weeks. And basically those are my two main top of funnel lead gen strategies, is gated content and giveaways. But I'll do Facebook lives, and I'll do other things as well. But if you just do gated content and giveaways, you should spend about five to 10% of your total marketing budget on email lead generation. Because some people take a little longer to warm up than others. So if you're only running conversion ads, you're going to miss out on growing your audience in a way that could be beneficial for you.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. I love this so much, and it's something that we've observed you doing, and something we're talking about now with other clients. That, if you can grow that email list, and if you're properly running email marketing, you're going to be able to convert that at a really high rate. And so gated content, so information people want, and/or giveaways, great ways to drive that list. And I was looking through some of your notes here. Looks like over the last 12 months you spent about 200,000 buying email leads that have then generated 750,000 in sales. So about a 375% return on add spend. That's not bad. But that's not like-

Ezra Firestone:

And that's with excluding anybody who was already on the list, dude.

Brett Curry:

What's that?

Ezra Firestone:

That's with excluding anyone who was already on the list. So those are new leads.

Brett Curry:

Just strictly new leads. So that really changes the game, because you could be looking at those campaigns and thinking, "Well, I just drove an email sign up. I didn't make a sale there, so it's not really worth a whole lot." But then you've got to look at that whole picture. What did those email subscribers do for you over the next six to 12 months? And in your case, it's a 3.75 X ROAS, which is amazing.

Ezra Firestone:

Pretty sweet. I mean, not that everyone's going to have that result, but it's worth doing, still, nonetheless.

Brett Curry:

Exactly. So, all right, awesome. So strategy number one, buy more email leads. I'm sold on that idea. Idea number two, launch new products. So talk about how Boom is approaching launching new products.

Ezra Firestone:

So to have a successful e-commerce business, you have to get your repeat customer rate up. Ideally over 30% of total revenue comes from repeat customers, people who bought from you once before. The best way to do that is to sell them more of what they already bought, if it's consumable. Or to introduce new items that they might want from you. And by the way, if somebody knows you, likes you, trust you, you're putting out content, you're engaging them, you've delivered a good product, they're going to probably want to buy whatever else you have to offer if it's tangentially related to what they bought in the first place.

Ezra Firestone:

So what we do is we send a customer survey every six months to our two X buyers, and we give them a bunch of stuff, like "If we were going to add more colors, what colors do you want? If you could wave a magic wand, what products would you have us create?" We have a 20 question survey. We say, "Hey, five people who take this survey are going to win $100 gift certificate to the store". We get a couple thousand responses. Based on that, we figure out what products to make next, based on the desire of our community.

Brett Curry:

That creates your product roadmap.

Ezra Firestone:

As an example, 50% of people wanted a mascara, 46% of people wanted a lip gloss, and 53% of people wanted an additional color of Boomstick. We released all three of those products last year, based on that information. They were our three best product launches ever. We just released the Boomstick color last week, we sold 15,000 units in 18 hours. 650 grand in revenue in 18 hours.

Brett Curry:

Whoa. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Say that again. You sold what?

Ezra Firestone:

We sold 15,000 units in 18 hours, dude. We sold out. 650 grand in 18 hours. Now of course I've got a mature company, but the point is that this process gets better over time. So when you're developing a new product, you're doing it in desire to your past customers, in relationship to their desire. And for us, you have componentry, formulation, and secondary packaging. So componentry is like, what is the component that it's going to go in? Well, the Boomstick, we already have that. That's great, we'll reuse the component we already have. The formula is, what is it going to be, why is it going to be that way, what are the benchmarks other brands are doing that we want to meet? We go through a bunch of iterations, we send it out to our best customers to test. It takes us about six months to a year to develop a formula.

Ezra Firestone:

And then our secondary packaging, is what is the box, what's the write alongs, what are the inserts? We get all that together, we run a photo shoot for it. And then we do an early bird. "Hey, we're going to launch this new product. This is what it is. Get excited, sign up for it to hear about it first." And then what happens is, as they're signing up, and as they're posting on social about it on the thread, we're finding out what they want to know. They're asking, "Is it hypoallergenic?" And we're like, "Oh shit, we don't have hypoallergenic on the sales page. It is hypo allergenic." So we add that to the sales page. The questions they ask, they become the FAQs that we put on the... So we use the pre-launch as a way to build out the marketing material. Build out the FAQ, build out the sales page.

Ezra Firestone:

And then we launch it, run ads to it, do emails to it. And then it becomes part of our ongoing marketing. Put it in bundles. And you can do this too with products you already have. So you can reformulate them to make them better than they already are. Based on feedback, you can change the componentry or packaging, make it more sustainable. You can bundle it with other items to make a kit. So you can renew and make better products you already have, and relaunch them, as well as introducing new items. But for us, we are aiming to introduce four new items a year, which is once a quarter, which is hard to do.

Brett Curry:

That's aggressive. That's one a quarter.

Ezra Firestone:

It's hard to do when you're making them all from scratch.

Brett Curry:

It's hard to do, yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

But it's a huge, huge part of the business. So yeah, it's really important to continually making the products better.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. And it's interesting that it's also fairly risky, too, to launch a new product. Will it go well, will it not go well? But the approach you're taking, it really eliminates a lot of the risk. You know that if you deliver a good product, which you guys do, you know how to do that, you're delivering exactly what someone is requesting, and exactly what someone wants.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah, and they also then can become a new top of funnel sales processes. So we can run top of funnel ads now. So for our mascara, I mean, that's our second best seller of all time, and we can run it at the top of the funnel because everybody's interested in mascara. And we didn't have one before. So we couldn't run ads for it at the top of the funnel. So we were missing a customer acquisition funnel there that we were able to add to the business.

Brett Curry:

Love it. And so then this actually directly ties into it. So this is strategy number three. Create more front end offers. So talk about that and how that's evolved for Boom, more front end offers.

Ezra Firestone:

I think that's mature business strategy. For Boom, we did 10 years where we had one front end offer, which was our Boomstick trio.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Boomstick.

Ezra Firestone:

And all of our social proof, all of our sales funnel optimization, all of our pre-sales, all of our video ads, all of our email sequences, everything was about that front end offer. Just make that as deep as possible. Have marketing assets for it, loyalty assets for it. Just really work on that and scale that. And that's a lot easier to go deep rather than wide. And a lot of people have a thousand skews, and they can't do that. Like with this product, this brand, I bought, Overtone, I got a hundred skews. So it's hard for me to have one front end funnel.

Ezra Firestone:

But for low skew e-commerce, it's easy. You just pick whatever your widest and best seller, and most relevant seller is, and just focus on that. But once you scale that, now you got to start introducing new front end offers. There's only so many people who are interested in a multipurpose blush stick. Some people aren't interested in blush, but they're interested in mascara, or lip gloss, or brow gel, or whatever. So we've now introduced a bunch more products to the... You're right, my voice is kind of frozen. It's funny, I sound like a frog.

Brett Curry:

You're good, dude. Hey, you're so you're bringing the fire, even though I'm feeling cold for you.

Ezra Firestone:

I usually have such a rich, deep voice, man. Anyways, it gives us the ability to have more fish hooks in the sea.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Love it. Love it. Let's go on to the next one, and this is related to number one, but this is now strategy number four.

Ezra Firestone:

By the way, another front end funnel is one of those lead gen funnels, too. Even if it's leading to the same product.

Brett Curry:

Yes.

Ezra Firestone:

It's a new top of funnel way of getting people in the mix. That's a new funnel. It doesn't have to be a new product.

Brett Curry:

Totally. And so looking at that, and what we've observed, working with Boom, working with other successful brands, is that a lot of them have one to three really successful top end funnels that they just push hard on, almost forever. And then with some tweaking and changing, and then you've got all your backend stuff as well. So, yeah. Really, really good. So let's talk then about strategy number four, growing your SMS subscribers. So diving into text based marketing. So, tips or suggestions you would give there for growing that list and utilizing SMS?

Ezra Firestone:

I mean, the 80/20 of SMS is this. Have the collection at checkout, where you're collecting people who check out from you, who click the little box to be collected. And have a two step opt in. First, get the email, second, incentivize for the SMS. So they come to your site, you say, "Hey, get 10% off, entering your email address". They enter it. "Hey, by the way, do you want an extra 5%? Give us your SMS". Klaviyo lets you do this, Postscript lets you do this, Attentive lets you do this, et cetera. Those are your two main ways to collect. And that's 85, 90% of the value. You can do other shit to collect, but it's not worth it. Just do that. And then when you send an abandoned card email and they don't open after 18 hours, slide a text in there, via Klaviyo. So connect it to your email logic, and do your-

Brett Curry:

Is that usually the way you do it, where you'll email first? And then if there's no response there, then you text?

Ezra Firestone:

Always. Yeah, because SMS is more expensive. So we'll use it as a... And you can only do this if you're using Klaviyo, because it talks to it. You can't have Attentive in Klaviyo, because they don't talk to each other. So if you're using Klaviyo, Klaviyo's a little more expensive for SMS, but if you're doing it the way I do, it doesn't matter, because you're only using it as a... You know? You're using it as a way to capture the people who aren't responding to email. Instead of just blasting them with both, and spending the money for that. So, if they don't respond to the card email, we'll slide an SMS. If we go purchase email, they don't cross-sell, we'll slide an SMS. And then once a week, you broadcast your bucket list with a piece of content or a sale. That's it. That's all you need to do. Have an opt in pre purchase, have an opt in at checkout, use it in your automation sequences, do one broadcast a week, your solid potato salad, you have 85% of the value you can get from SMS.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. You really go beyond that, it's just going to be tiny little gains. And potentially a difference-

Ezra Firestone:

It's not worth it. It's not worth it.

Brett Curry:

Not worth it. Not worth the effort.

Ezra Firestone:

Just spend your energy acquiring more customers.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, totally. And so those weekly broadcast on SMS, are you doing a mix of promotions and content?

Ezra Firestone:

So those will be content. The best piece of content from the week will drop via the SMS. And then if we're running a sale, that week, we won't send content, we'll send about the sale.

Brett Curry:

And your best piece of content pulling from the way Boom is doing it, it's based on blog, is that right? So you're writing blogs weekly or something?

Ezra Firestone:

We send three pieces of content to our list every week. Maybe it's a long form article, maybe it's a user generated content video, maybe it's a recap from a Facebook live we did. Whatever. We're sending content every week, at least three pieces, long form written articles, videos, user generated content. We've got a whole social media content engagement system. And so whatever worked the best that week, we'll drop to the SMS list. And then every six-

Brett Curry:

Nice. So you're emailing that content initially. So you're emailing-

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah, we're emailing that, we're posting it to the blog, we're posting out to social, we're amplifying it. We're doing the whole system. And then the best shit, we drop to the list, which links over to the blog. And we drop to the SMS list. And then every six weeks we're running a product launch or a sale. So that sixth week will be a promotion via SMS.

Brett Curry:

Got it. And anything you can say about response rates, metrics? How is SMS working in comparison to email? I know it's just designed to be a compliment to email, but anything you can say about stats, performance?

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah, I mean, SMS gets better response rates, but you have smaller lists. And you get way more unsubscribes. So it's-

Brett Curry:

And you got to be really careful about spam related stuff.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah.

Brett Curry:

People get pretty hot on-

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot you got to worry about with that. But basically it works really well, and you should use it as a compliment, and not instead of... And you should do what I'm talking about, which is basically 80/20 it.

Brett Curry:

Not really standalone. You're not going to just be like, "Hey, SMS is my one strategy."

Ezra Firestone:

Some brands do. Some brands do. But I think if you ignore email, what are we doing?

Brett Curry:

Right. For most people, it's just a beautiful compliment, and a way to really increase the effectiveness of email. But it is a compliment. Awesome. So now we're going to move into strategy number five. I actually love this one. I love all of them, this is all gold. But this is something that was kind of an aha moment for me. I first heard about a strategy like this, it was made be Dan Kennedy back in the day, maybe Jay Abraham. I go way back, man, looking at marketing stuff. But you're talking about inventing a holiday. So there's this idea that people need a reason why. They need a reason why I should buy now, they need a reason why your product is better. And sometimes an invented holiday is a great reason why you should buy now. So, talk about invented holidays, and talk about what you're doing at Boom.

Ezra Firestone:

So excuses to communicate are important. And we take everyone we can. We communicate on Earth Day, we communicate on Animal Friendly Day, we communicate on National Dog Day. Because people like that kind of shit.

Brett Curry:

They do. People like it.

Ezra Firestone:

And everybody has a dog, and everybody likes the earth, and so on and so forth. And we do too. And so we are always doing emails like that. Like, "Hey, it's Earth Day. And you know what? We care a lot about sustainability. And these are our most sustainable products, for these reasons." And whatever. And so we're constantly mailing on using the fake or created holidays as a reason to communicate on social and on email. And so we made up our own. We made Pro-Age Month. We are the first people to say pro-age. Now it's a commonly known thing. Now you've got a million knock brands, but we spent 40 million over six years, popularizing the concept of pro-age, back in 2010. And now Allure is stealing it, and it's like we have penetrated the mainstream with this.

Brett Curry:

It's awesome.

Ezra Firestone:

We've entered the zeitgeist with this concept. And so now it's a thing. And so we want to claim ownership of that, because we do own it. You don't never own an idea, but we created that movement. And so we created Pro-Age Month. And the month of August is Pro-Age Month. And we tell pro-age stories, and we've got a logo for it. And we are claiming our rights to the pro-age movement. The pro-age revolution that we started in 2010. And a good way to do that, was to create a holiday around it.

Brett Curry:

Create a holiday, create a month, and people love that. And it's such a great conversation starter and connection point. And if you think about one of the big components of building a brand, is just building that connection and that community. And sometimes odd or unusual holidays do that. And inventing your own holiday, I think it's brilliant. I think more people should look at it. And I think a lot of brands lend themselves well. Maybe it's not pro-age for you, and Ezra owns that anyway, so back off, really. Seriously.

Ezra Firestone:

I mean, whatever. You could say pro-age if you believe in that. What I find, is most people say pro-age and they don't actually know what it means. Which is hilarious. They'll be like, "Pro-age..." this or that. And then they'll have anti-aging skin drops.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. "But cover your gray, and no more wrinkles." Yeah, yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

You've missed the point here.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yeah. But inventing a holiday, pure gold, I love it. Anybody can do it. And so highly recommend that as well. So we're getting tied on time, so we're going to have to maybe move rapid fire through some of these or just save some of them for the blog. But number six is, list products on Amazon.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah.

Brett Curry:

What are you guys doing there for your brands? Talk about that a little bit.

Ezra Firestone:

Amazon will make up 20 to 30% of a good brand's sales. And you're going to miss those customers if you're not over there. And our-

Brett Curry:

Because some people only buy on Amazon. That's just it.

Ezra Firestone:

I mean, yeah. And we waited 10 years to put our products on Amazon, because we could fill the demand that we had with... Our supply chain could barely fill the demand we had from direct to consumer. But once we beefed up our supply chain, and we realized that adding to Amazon wasn't going to cannibalize our direct to consumer platform, we added our main product on there, and it just crushed. It just added 10 to 15% of incremental sales.

Brett Curry:

Immediately. Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

So now we're adding every one of our products, once every two months, onto Amazon. You guys are running all of our ads over there, doing all of our A plus lists. All we do is do the customer support, and create the assets for the page. You guys literally do everything else. You run all the ads, you optimize all the pages, you handle all the seller support. You do fucking everything for us. So it's great for us, because it's a channel that really works, that we don't really have the expertise for, that you just do for us. I mean, we pay you for it, but probably not what you should get paid. Because I think you give us a deal. But-

Brett Curry:

We do. We do. But, gladly. We gladly give you that deal, for sure.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah. So it's been really good for us.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's been amazing, it's been fun to execute on our end for sure. And one thing we noticed with you, we noticed this with native ... as well, client, friends. And we don't run their Amazon, but we observe. We run their Google and YouTube. Is that there's some expectation that when you launch on Amazon, there's going to be some cannibalization of your store's sales. And certainly that happens some, but this has been mostly incremental growth for you guys, right?

Ezra Firestone:

100% incremental. There's been no cannibalization whatsoever. Which is crazy, because I was sure there was going to be. We sell it at the same price, and some people just like to buy over there. And I think what was happening was a lot of people were seeing our ads on Facebook, going to buy on Amazon, not finding it, and then buying knockoff brands. Because they only buy on Amazon.

Brett Curry:

Buying something else. Buy knockoff. Yeah, we experienced that. That'd be a topic for another podcast. The copycats and the people that were...

Ezra Firestone:

...

Brett Curry:

... really leeching off of your brand name on Amazon.

Ezra Firestone:

Nightmare.

Brett Curry:

But yeah, nightmare for sure. For sure. But we're getting there. So yeah, big believer in Amazon. And what's interesting to me, and this is where Boom and Overtone are set up perfectly for Amazon, is that success on Amazon in the long term, and I think even right now, is based on building a brand. So taking the community building aspect, the brand building aspect that you're doing off Amazon, and do that on Amazon, that's where you see long term success. It's not just hacking the titles and the keywords, and the bullet points, to try to inflate your ranking, or using super URLs, or some other strategy to hack your ranking, but building a real brand.

Brett Curry:

And that's what you guys are good at, and that's what we're helping you with. And it's working. It's working on Amazon right now. So let's talk, and this will probably be our final concept for the podcast, and I'll push the final one, people to go check out on the blog post. But the seventh strategy for growth, is advertising on television. TV? What? Come on now. So what are your thoughts on TV? And this has been fun to watch too, but what are your thoughts on advertising on television?

Ezra Firestone:

I think it's really only for very, very, very mature brands. Because the minimum that you need to do it is 350 grand. Minimum. Just to test. And that's a two month test. And you also have to produce television quality ads. Now we were able to use user generated content. We spent 50 grand on a TV commercial produced by a fancy agency, and at flopped all crazy. And then we made our own ad, based on UGC that we had. And we crushed. So we're much better direct response advertisers than these TV agencies, it turns out. Which we should've known, because we've been fucking running direct response ads for 15 years. Makes sense we would know what would work, versus what they produced. Even though what they produced, it was a whole... We could talk about that another time. It wasn't very good.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yeah.

Ezra Firestone:

But it's hard to tell how successful TV has been for us. We've spent about half a million dollars over the course of six months, and I think incrementally, it has been successful. But we're having Northbeam, which is a company you hooked us up with.

Brett Curry:

Shout out to Northbeam, Austin, and the folks there.

Ezra Firestone:

We just turned it off, and looks like sales are down 15K a day since we turned off TV. We'll see. I think TV is great for omnichannel presence. If you're spending three, four, 500K a month on social media ads, you should add in TV at 10, 15% of your budget, to reach more people, and reach the people that you're reaching on social in a different area. And for us, we just turned it off to see how it's going to impact whether we run it or not. And so we're still trying to figure out the attribution on it, and how well it's working. But our sense is that it worked pretty well.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. And that's a great way to test it. Turn it off, see what the impact is there. And it also helps tremendously to have a tool like Northbeam, third party attribution. Brilliant stuff, check it out. And we're seeing some similar things. So first of all, I got my start in TV, radio, print. So I still really like TV. I'm still involved in local TV just a little bit with a friend of mine. But I love this strategy. I think it is for bigger brands. But yeah, if you're spending multi six figures on Facebook ads, YouTube ads, then TV may be something that you check out. But along a similar vein, we're testing now, we tested it with Boom and with a few other clients. Creating some awareness, we call it awareness layer YouTube campaigns.

Brett Curry:

And again, you kind of need something like Northbeam in place, to really see the impact of this. But the idea there, is as well we're just going for low cost engagement, low cost views. We're seeing CPMs for some of these awareness level YouTube campaigns at six bucks, five bucks, which is crazy low. But there's something to be said, and this is marketing 101, old school stuff. If you talk to the right people enough times, with a right message, so right message, right market, right media, you're going to get results. And so obviously you got to be ready for it with budget, and you have to have the tracking in place to really make good use of it. But I love that you guys are testing TV. And I also love the fact that it wasn't the super duper polished stuff that worked. It was what we do. The UGC stuff that did well on TV, too.

Ezra Firestone:

Yeah. It was UGC. And we started doing video view advertising on Facebook, when iOS 14.5 happened, because Facebook lost all its data. So we started running video view campaigns to all the audiences that we used to run conversion campaigns to, to let Facebook build up some data of the people who watched most of our videos. And then we would follow up with those people and run conversion ads to them. And now we're doing that with YouTube as well. And I think that strategy post iOS 14.5 on both networks, where you spend a thousand bucks a day at our scale, running video views, or maybe 10% of your overall spend, is a great strategy. We're doing it at Overtone too.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, this has been amazing, Ezra. So that's seven of the eight tips. Hey, to get that eighth tip, check out the show notes, go check out Ezra's blog, smartmarketer.com, and get that final one. But Ezra, as people are listening, I know we got some super fans-

Ezra Firestone:

I'm cold, man. I'm cold. That's what's going on.

Brett Curry:

You're cold. Then yeah, you need to go warm up, dude.

Ezra Firestone:

I do. I need ...

Brett Curry:

Get your robe, get your blanket, go sit by the fire, or something like that. But for those that are listening and thinking, "I need more Ezra Firestone in my life." How can they connect with you, where should they learn more about you? Where should they do that?

Ezra Firestone:

I'm on Instagram @ezrafirestone, I'm on Twitter @ezrafirestone, I'm on Facebook, Facebook.com/MeetEzra. I'm on smartmarketer.com, which is a blog that I have, I'm on zipify.com, which are my apps for Shopify. But you can find me on social media. I'm on YouTube, all the social media networks. Whatever ones you use, I'm there. You can Google me on there or search me on there. And yeah. Thanks for hanging out, hope it's been some kind of helpful. Appreciate you, Brett. I love that you're between two ferns over there.

Brett Curry:

That's a hilarious show. And you're not the first person to say that. They're like, "Dude, are you between two ferns here? Are you Zach Galifianakis or what? What are you doing?" I'm a little more courteous to my guests and a little more on topic, but that show is hilarious.

Ezra Firestone:

It's awesome, dude.

Brett Curry:

But another plug that I'll make here as I'm sitting between two ferns, is, do check out Smart Marketer. Molly Pittman, John Grimshaw, running that with Ezra's leadership, Ezra started it. But some amazing resources there. Train My Traffic Person. So if you got in-house media buyers, you need to send them through Train My Traffic Person. You get to learn from me too, I'm a faculty member there teaching YouTube and teaching Google. But check that out, smartmarketer.com. Highly, Highly recommend it.

Ezra Firestone:

Thank y'all.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. Ezra, appreciate it, brother. This has been amazing, thank you so much. And see you next time.

Ezra Firestone:

Talk soon.

‍

I’ve never met anyone quite like Miki Agrawal.

‍

She’s incredibly creative. No really. She once hosted a “funeral for a tree” at an old cathedral in NYC hosted by comedians and actors. It drew a crowd of thousands, generated millions in free press and helped shed light on the toilet paper waste that her company TUSHY can help solve. 

‍

She understands trends in marketing. She knows how to grab attention. So much so that she was banned by the NY   transit authority from running subway ads. Which led to a PR fight that she won…and in the end, got more press and attention than if they hadn’t been banned. 

‍

She’s also warm and kind and FUN. 

‍

She’s created multiple 9-Figure businesses and has garnered some pretty incredible recognition. She was named "Fast Company's Most Creative People", “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum and INC's “Most Impressive Women Entrepreneurs”.

‍

She’s also the author of #1 best selling books Do Cool SH*T and Disrupt-HER.

‍

In this episode we unpack Miki’s wacky, impossible-to-forget and wildly successful marketing strategies and tactics.

‍

Here’s a look at what we cover:

‍

• How Miki was banned from advertising on the NYC subway and turned that into a huge PR win for her brand THINX
• How to use Accessible + Relatable language 
• How to create ads that are both effective and “fridge worthy”
• How iteration is perfection
• How to start with play to create great ideas

‍

Mentioned in This Episode:

Miki Agrawal

   - Website

   - Instagram

   - Link Tree to Resources

TUSHY

   - Website

   - Instagram

Thinx

   - Website

   - Instagram

Wild

   - Website

   - Instagram

“Do Cool Sh*t” by Miki Agrawal

“Disrupt-Her” by Miki Agrawal

“Zero To $100 Million” on Mindvalley‍

Cap Con 5
Ryan Daniel Moran‍

Toto‍

“Funeral for a Tree” by TUSHY video on YouTube‍

Butt Con by TUSHY

Transcript:

Brett:

Welcome to the Spicy Curry Podcast. We explore hot topics on eCommerce and digital marketing. We feel feature some of the brightest minds, with some of the SPT perspectives on what it takes to grow your business. Season one of this podcast is built on the old business adage that, what it really takes to succeed is three things. One: have something good to say. Two: say it well. And three: say it often.

Brett:

My guest in this episode is Miki Agrawal. She's the founder of TUSHY, but she's also the entrepreneur behind several other wildly successful companies. I don't know anyone better than Miki at the, have something good to say and say it well, aspects of growth. And so just a couple of accolades. Miki was named one of Fast Company's Most Creative People. She was also named by Inc Magazine as one of the Most Impressive Women Entrepreneurs. She was also my favorite speaker, and she's also one of the favorite speakers that most of the events that she attends.

Brett:

We're going to dive into some crazy wild stories from her entrepreneur journeys. We're going to learn why she was banned by the New York subway from running ads there, and how she actually overcame that and then ran some pretty powerful ads on the New York subway system. We're going to talk about how she creates events that are just, blow your mind. Like, they had a funeral for a tree, and there's a reason why they did that and got millions of dollars in free press. And she talks about how to craft things that are both artful and fridge worthy, but also effective. And so, I think you're going to absolutely love this interview. And so, lean in, buckle up and enjoy this interview with Miki Agrawal.

Brett:

Over 81% of consumers are opted into text message messages from their favorite brands, and that's where Attentive comes in. Meet Attentive, the company helping thousands of innovative brands connect with their customers through personalized text messaging. Attentive's text marketing platform lets you grow your subscriber list, interact with customers in real time through two-way conversations and drive the war revenue. Brands who use Attentive see $55 in sales for every $1 they spend. See what Attentive can do for you, at attentivemobile.com/omgcommerce. Attentive: drive sales with text message marketing.

Brett:

All right, well today I am abs absolutely thrilled that my guest is Miki Agrawal. Now, I was recently at an event, CapCon 5 in Austin, Texas. My good friend, Ryan Daniel Moran was the host. And there was a star-studded lineup of speakers. Amazing, blow your mind speakers. And I got to say, Miki was probably my favorite. And I hope that some of my other friends that were speaking don't hear this, because I don't want to hurt their feelings. It's just that Miki was amazing. And so, Miki is the founder of a number of really transformative businesses. Most recently, TUSHY. Also, THINX and WILD. She's also author of some amazing best-selling books. Do Cool Sh*t. Disrupt-Her, which I'm actually in the process, I've gone about halfway through it right now. And even though it has "her" in the title, Disrupt-Her, instead of disruptor, it's for dudes too. Right, Miki? And so, I'm actually getting a lot of value out of it. And so, we're going to talk about growth and having an amazing marketing message, and thinking differently and all kinds of great stuff. So Miki, welcome to the show, and how's it going?

Miki:

Yes. I'm so happy to be here with you. And just, the thing that I just can't, I'm just so like, I love is that you have eight children, and you're sitting at the table with 10 people every night for dinner. That just blows my mind.

Brett:

Yeah. The level of noise at the dinner table is sometimes crazy. And we do this thing called highs and lows, where everybody goes around and tells their high of the day. You have to have a high of the day, you don't have to have a low of the day if you don't want to, but it is required to have a high. And the noise level is crazy, but it's also super fun.

Miki:

I love that you do that. That's beautiful, that's amazing.

Brett:

Yeah. So, part of what attracted me to you, Miki, and why I was so thrilled to chat with you afterwards. Is one, you're a master marketer. And the way you craft messages and the way you get attention, it's mind blowing, which is awesome. But you're also like, you believe in strong women, right? And I've got six daughters and I just, I want them to conquer the world. That's probably a weird thing to say, but I want them to just do whatever they feel led and whatever they feel passionate about doing. And so, love the energy you bring and the inspiration you're bringing to young women as well.

Miki:

Six daughters. I mean, it's just, yeah. Like, I think about the food bill just for that dinner, just for those meals, just now. It's just [crosstalk 00:05:10].

Brett:

The food bill is crazy. So I'm happy to talk about that with anyone offline. Yeah. So, when you include groceries and eating out, it's a median household income. It's a lot of money, yeah. But grateful to be able to do it. I wouldn't have it any other way, but it is completely [crosstalk 00:05:28].

Miki:

I love it.

Brett:

So yeah, it's awesome. Well, let's talk about a few things. So if you would Miki, give people kind of just the quick background on you. Because we're going to dig into some of the specific messages that you use at TUSHY and things like that. But give people the background. Like, how did you become this, because not only were you my favorite speaker at CapCon, but I've seen, you were voted best speaker at Inc and Fast Company, and some of these other big events. Everybody loves what you have to say. So really, how did you get here?

Miki:

Well, I'm one of three children, and the interesting fun fact about the three of us is that we are all born within one year. So I have an identical twin sister. The third sister, who's 11 months older. So we're actually, we're Irish twins.

Brett:

Yeah, Irish twins and identical twins [crosstalk 00:06:18].

Miki:

Irish triplets.

Brett:

Okay.

Miki:

So we're twins, plus Irish triplets, yeah.

Brett:

It's insane.

Miki:

Yeah. And then we grew up to a Japanese mother and Indian father. So my mother's from Japan, speaks with a thick Japanese accent. My dad is from India, speaks with a very thick Indian accent.

Brett:

I'm doing the audio book of Disrupt-Her. And you do the Indian accent for your dad, an it's just amazing. You do such a good job, yeah.

Miki:

But yeah, his most, the thing they always say is, he says, when he meets somebody, he goes, "Very good vibes". Or, "Very bad vibes." And immediately, because yeah, he can sniff people out just by "their vibes".

Brett:

By "their vibes", okay, I love that.

Miki:

By "their vibes".

Brett:

That's awesome.

Miki:

Yeah. And I grew up in Montreal, Canada. In French Montreal, in the south shore of Montreal. In a town called [foreign language 00:07:12]. And it's like, I grew up in French, like literally, we were the token Asians in the most French neighborhood ever. And so, it was really beautiful to grow up in this true mosaic of cultures. Japan, India, French, American. And then of course, Canada attracts so many, I mean, every culture, every religion, and they're all celebrated. And so of course, growing up in a household of just diversity and then going to school with just all diverse kids, I think we just learned to question everything. And to look at things from different angles. To be like, oh, this is how the Indians look at it, this is how the Japanese look it, how the French look at it, and the Americans look at it, this is how the Canadians look at it.

Brett:

It forces a fresh perspective, rather than just everybody being the same.

Miki:

Totally. So it's a mosaic versus melting pot thinking. And I think that that mosaic thinking creates beautiful picture. When you think about a mosaic image, and it's just this, all these colors and all these textures, and all of the different historical context of things, creates a different frame than just a single pain. So I think I was very blessed in just being born where I was born, to be given the various perspectives. To not just be like, okay, this is the way it is. It's like, wait, is this, or should I question it? And is there a better way, or is there more thoughtful way? Or that kind of thing.

Brett:

When did you realize that, hey, I might be an entrepreneur? Or have you ever? Like, is that really a conscious thought? Like, when did you think, hey, I'm going to build companies? And not just companies, but wildly successful and disruptive companies.

Miki:

Yeah. I mean, I think I'm just genuinely unemployable. I think I'm just like, you're not my Indian father. That kind of vibes. Where like, anytime someone told me what to do, blood would rush to my head and I would just get really frustrated. I would, I don't know, get triggered or something. But no, I think I just always beat to my own drum. And I think because of this questioning, because of this philosophy of looking at things from different perspectives, I think I just always had different ideas that I wanted to put out in the world. That entrepreneurship, when it was introduced to me, I remember, I'll never forget. I met my very first entrepreneur, standing in line in New York City when I was 22 years old, at this Armani party.

Miki:

I was invited to my very first VIP door, or whatever. [crosstalk 00:09:47] And I was like, oh my God, I'm so cool. It was like, Armani. You know, whatever. Back when it was really cool to go to those things. And I remember standing in line, and in front of me was this gentleman who I'd met. And his name was Graham, and he's now since become one of my dearest friends. But I met him randomly, standing in line in front of me then. I was 22, and he was in his mid-thirties when I met him. And I was like, "oh". Like, "What are you up to?"

Miki:

And he's like, "I'm an entrepreneur."

Miki:

And I was like, "What do you mean?"

Miki:

And he is like, "I have my own business." And this is, by the way, in 2001, when entrepreneurship wasn't a school thing. Nobody was getting invested in, it wasn't a thing. I mean, Facebook wasn't even there until 2006.

Brett:

Now it's super trendy. Everybody wants to say entrepreneur, stamped that on their [crosstalk 00:10:33].

Miki:

Now, everyone. But back then, nobody. It was doctor, lawyer, investment banker, management consultant. Going to work for a company. Becoming a whatever at a company. Becoming a person who starts a business was just not even in the lexicon, in the zeitgeist of culture back then.

Miki:

And he was like, "I'm not in firm."

Miki:

I'm like, "What do you mean?"

Miki:

He's like, "I have my own company."

Miki:

I'm like, "Well, what do you do?"

Miki:

And he's like, "Well, I started a company called treehugger.com."

Miki:

And I was like, "Oh, that's cool."

Miki:

And he's like, "And I sold it." I think he sold it to Discovery Channel, whatever.

Miki:

And I was like, "Wow!" And then he, the next day, invited me to this brunch with a bunch of other entrepreneurs. And that's when it was my big ding, ding, ding moment. I can start my own company, I'm going to do that. And I think in life, we just get given these gifts of chance meetings. And either we kind of get opened by it or we close to it. And I was sort of just blasted open by the possibilities of that. And I think that's what really put me on the course of this new way of thinking and being, and then carrying forward.

Brett:

That's amazing. And I do want to, let's give kind of a brief overview of some of the companies. Just to give people some texture and some more context. So your mind was blown, and you're thinking, I could do my own thing. And then you have, and you've been wildly successful. Really at, essentially, everything. But can you give a quick rundown of the companies, and what they've done?

Miki:

Yeah. Well, I will first start by saying, one of the biggest stories that changed the course my life was when I was 22. After that time, 9/11 happened, and that was a huge turning point in my life.

Brett:

Yeah, because you were an investment banker, working down on Wall Street, right?

Miki:

Yes. The World Trade center was my subway stop every single morning. And it I was working at Deutsche Bank, in investment banking. I call it douche bank.

Brett:

Wow. Someone was asking for that, honestly, right? Deutche Bank, it's so close to douche, you're going to make the jokes, yeah.

Miki:

Know what I mean? Yeah. So yeah, when I was there, yeah, 9/11 happened. I was supposed to be there, and 2 World Trade Center was my subway stop every single morning. And I would walk upstairs to 2 World Trade Center, at the cafe there. And I would get tea with my girlfriend, who worked on the 100th floor. And then I would walk across the street to my office, directly across 2 World Trade Center. And then 9/11 happened, and it was the first day of my life, the only day of my life that I slept through my alarm clock.

Brett:

That is crazy and amazing.

Miki:

Yeah. And 700 people in my girlfriend's office died on that day. Two people in my office died. It was one of those, just like, you can't make this shit up. Like, this is not a real movie, that kind of level of unfathomableness.

Brett:

Unfathomable, yeah.

Miki:

Yeah. And so that single experience, again, it's those moments that I kind of really recognize as these turning points in my life. And that was a big turning point in my life. Where I was like, wow, I could die tomorrow. And when you're 22, you don't think about death. I feel like we start thinking about death after we have children, in a lot of ways. And I'm just always making sure I'm not going to die. Do you know? And I'm sure, with your eight children, I don't even know how [inaudible 00:13:50]. You know?

Brett:

Yeah.

Miki:

But death, it's just not a thing, when you're a kid, when you're 22, you're just sort of like, whatever.

Brett:

You're usually not thinking about it at all, yeah.

Miki:

Just not thinking at all. But then, because I had this near potential death experience, and people around me died, and I was just sort of like, wow, this is a real thing. And I really felt my mortality in that moment. And it was like, wow, I got to make every single day count.

Brett:

Got to do something, yeah. We're going to blink and we're going to be 70, right? And so, what are you going to fill your time with now? Yeah.

Miki:

That's right. And so yeah, for me, it was, I wrote down three things. The first was to play soccer professionally, the second was to make movies, and the third was to start a business. And that sort of set me on sort of a total path after 9/11,.I played soccer for the New York Magic, I worked in the film industry for a couple of years, and then I started my first business, which was in the restaurant space. And so, my first business was born out of a stomach ache. We know that famous thing, necessity is the mother of invention.

Brett:

Yes, so true.

Miki:

Yeah. So the first business was born out of a stomach ache, and I couldn't eat pizza anymore. It was my favorite comfort food, but I just couldn't eat anymore because it made me bloated and gassy, and just so gross feeling after I ate it. And it was full of bleached flour, processed cheese, sugar-filled sauces, processed toppings, it was all that. And so yeah, I basically started New York City's very first gluten free alternative pizza concept. And 17 and a half years later, we're still in business. Almost 18 years this year. In November, 18 years.

Brett:

Amazing. And it's called WILD, correct?

Miki:

Called WILD. Just go to @eatdrinkwild on Instagram. We have a couple locations in New York City, and one in Guatemala.

Brett:

And [crosstalk 00:15:42] for surviving the pandemic. I couldn't imagine owning a restaurant during the pandemic in New York City. That had to been just absolutely brutal. So grateful, yeah.

Miki:

It was nuts. My partner Walid is incredible, and he's such an ingenious person. He has lots of [inaudible 00:15:57]. Where actually what we did was, we opened up, on Seamless Web, three restaurants, out of our restaurants. So during the pandemic, not only did we have our regular standard fair, but we opened up two different restaurants, working out of our kitchen. So basically, we made tacos and we did burgers, or whatever, so that people could order from us multiple times a week.

Brett:

Oh, super smart, super [crosstalk 00:16:24].

Miki:

So, take away. And not just have our gluten-free pizza stuff every week, but they would have tacos one night, and different stuff. And so we just opened three different restaurants under the same roof during the pandemic. And then we got the outdoor cafe seating. And that, our business all came back. And it was actually incredible, because it felt like a bit of Europe being in New York, with all the outdoor cafes everywhere, and people walking around with the menu. It was just, it was very romantic, very beautiful. So the rest restaurants was the very first business I learned. I think I learned so much of the thesis around people and psychology in my restaurants, that then led to building Thinks and led to building TUSHY. Both now valued over nine figures, well over nine. And so I, what I learned at WILD was, when I stood outside my restaurant for almost seven years, handing out little pieces of pizza, just handing them out.

Brett:

That's how you grew the business, was samples, yeah.

Miki:

Exactly, yeah. And getting people to try. And I would also test. Like, if I said healthy pizza, people wouldn't come. But if I said, farmed fresh, healthy farm to table pizza, people would be like, oh, what does that mean?

Brett:

Yeah. Nobody wants healthy pizza. That sounds cardboard.

Miki:

Exactly.

Brett:

But farm to table pizza, interesting. And so, you were testing out those messages as people were walking by?

Miki:

AB testing, literally like email, subject heading.

Brett:

I love that.

Miki:

You know? And it was such, seven years of, it was genuinely like double PhD in human psychology and what led people to come closer to attract them, or to kind of move them back. And it was a really interesting thing. Just by standing, literally person by person, like hand to hand combat, just really getting to know people.

Brett:

Fascinating.

Miki:

And that experience led to this thesis, understanding, that again, built THINX and TUSHY. Which was having a best in class product. Like, if someone bit into it and they're like, Ugh.

Brett:

It doesn't matter, yeah.

Miki:

[crosstalk 00:18:30] my underwear. Like tight now, I'm wearing my period-proof underwear. It was so amazing because, I started my period today, I went to my bathroom. You're like, I have six daughters, don't worry about it.

Brett:

So, it does not bother me in the least. Like, yeah, this is a common conversation around my house, yeah.

Miki:

Yeah.

Brett:

Think of the podcast first, though. First to confess on the podcast, which I embrace this, I welcome, this is awesome.

Miki:

First of all, every single human being is here because of a women's period. So, you're welcome. You know?

Brett:

Yes.

Miki:

[crosstalk 00:18:59] Be more uncomfortable. Yeah. So today, this morning, I went to the bathroom and I was kind of like, there's a little bit of blood everywhere. And so I basically sat on my toilet, used my TUSHY bidet, washed myself clean, And then put my THINX underwear on. And I was just like, ah.

Brett:

You're like, this is amazing.

Miki:

I solved my own problem twice. Just now, in this moment. And that's when I was like, yeah, this is why these businesses are doing well. Because genuinely, they truly, truly, truly solve problems that we face every single day.

Brett:

Authentically solving the problem, not just identifying a problem and kind of addressing it just for a cash grab, but you authentically solve the problem.

Miki:

Needed it, yeah. Which is why in my book, Do Cool Sh*t, I talk about the three questions I always ask myself before starting any business. The first question is, what sucks in my world? That's to start with me, a problem in my world that sucks. And then question number two is, but does it suck for a lot of people? Because if it just sucks for me, then I'm kind of a diva or whatever, and who cares. [crosstalk 00:20:04].

Miki:

And then the third question, which I think is the most important. Which is, can I be passionate about this issue, cause, or community, for a really long time. We know the saying, it takes 10 years to be an overnight success. People don't want to sit in that discomfort for a really, really long time, and then they quit or decide to leave early, and they don't kind of get through it. I think about the entrepreneurs, I think about the musicians, I think about the actors, I think about all the people in my life who've made it. And they've made it because they've kind of grinded for a really long time. And they made through it, and they just stuck with their passion, they stuck with the thing they truly believed in. And so I think, yeah, what sucks in my world, has sucked for a lot of people. Can I be passionate about this issue? I think the passion piece is the most important. [crosstalk 00:20:49]

Brett:

It's super important. And this is something I think you may have shared at CapCon already with somebody else. But, tactics without the underlying passion are worthless or it's going to be short lived. Tactics only work for so long. Like, you've got to have that passion and that drive to push through all the messy and confusing and heartache and suffering that you have to go through as a business owner. And so yeah, the passion is super, super important.

Brett:

Now, why do you think you're so attracted to difficult things to sell? So we'll start with pizza first. So, selling healthy, gluten free pizza. When you started the business, gluten free wasn't trendy. Like, gluten free wasn't a selling point. It's not something you want to stick on all your labels. Because people were like, what are you even talking about?

Miki:

Yeah. And no one was talking about farm to table, no one was talking about [crosstalk 00:21:36], no one was talking about seasonal.

Brett:

None of that.

Miki:

This is in 2003-2004. I mean, it was still super nascent, all of those conversations, it was extremely different.

Brett:

Yeah. And when you started THINX, which is period-proof underwear, no one was really talking about periods. Or, not wanting to talk about it. And maybe some people don't want to talk about now. [crosstalk 00:21:50] But yeah, you just got to get over it. But then also TUSHY, a bidet. I still remember so many conversations just as stuff started to get in the news. People were like, "Oh, bidets are nasty."

Brett:

And I'm like, "How is it nasty to use water to clean yourself versus dry paper?" But anyway, you're choosing these categories that are difficult. Like, it's new to people or taboo to people. Why do you think [crosstalk 00:22:13]?

Miki:

Well, it's a culture shift that I'm interested in. I think from a creative perspective and as a creative challenge. Like, how do you change people's behavior, is the hardest change to make. And then how, how do you utilize innovation and creativity to do that? And so I think from a creative kind of person's perspective, it's like, wow, this is a really fun challenge to tackle. How do you get someone to change their behavior when it comes to food? When it comes to habits? Daily habits that they've been doing their whole lives, not even their whole lives, but for generations. To get them to try something new, and not only try it, but adopt it fully. I mean, that is why Toto hasn't made it to America yet. That is why the tampons and pads, which were invented by men, which is fine. But not that fine, cause they're made for women. So it's just, it's like, those are the most pervasive products in the world, because it's taboo. And so, how do we enter these conversations in a way that's artful? In a way that's accessible, and we're using the best in class product?

Miki:

And I think those, my thesis that I learned from the pizza, from the restaurants was that was that, was the three prong. Prong number one is best in class product. It has to be a best in class product. It has to be a big day that, when I clip to my toilet, it actually feels good, it looks good.

Brett:

It adds to the appearance of your bathroom. Like, it makes your bathroom feel better, cleaner.

Miki:

It makes it more upscale and cool. It makes people want to bring you to their bathroom when you're having a dinner party. You know like that? Or when you're wearing THINX, like when I'm wearing my underwear right now, I feel really sexy in them. I feel really taken care of in them. I know that I'm protect, I know that this product works. So, best in class product. The pizza, when I eat it, it tastes the most delicious pizza. It doesn't even taste gluten and free, it tastes the most delicious pizza you've ever tasted. So, best in class product, no question, that is baseline. Second prong, to really shift culture, is art. Using art to really challenge conversations.

Miki:

And I talked a little bit about this at CapCon. When I remember putting our first TUSHY ads up, or our first period ads up, out in the world, whether online or offline. People's first reaction were like, wow, that's so beautiful. And then their second reaction's, oh my God, they're talking about poop, they're talking about periods. Like, oh my [crosstalk 00:24:49]. But their very first reaction was leaning into the art and the beauty of that. And I think that, that opens up people's hearts and minds. Art just does that, and for everyone at every level, does that. It opens, art just gives people something to lean into. And I think when they're leaning into something, it makes them be curious. And so the first thing is, can we design from a lens of art? So, we hired all artists, we hired all creatives. I think art is such a beautiful lens to shift people's perspective. I mean, that's why people go to museums, people look at magazines, people look at nature as art. And a place to go and really open up our souls, open up our perspectives, change the way we look and see things.

Miki:

And I think that really lends itself to giving people the space to question their existing thinking. And I think that's all we need to do, is give them that space to question, and they can make the decision for themselves. And so then, that's the artfulness, the best in class innovation.

Miki:

And then the third part is the accessible, relatable language. I think we so often want to be so heady, and so clinical, and so technical, and so medical, and so academic, and sound really smart. And make everyone feel we've been and doing all this patent pending work and whatever. And it's just like, people don't care. They want to know, does it work? Does it make me feel good? Does it support me and does it support my life? Like, what's the point of this? Like, I don't care about your terminology.

Brett:

Patent pending.

Miki:

And like, I don't care about high sounding or smart. Like, whatever. And then, I tested all of that. That was all tested. I learned that, the more we speak from our space of truth, the more we speak from our place of that lit fire inside. We talked about that at CapCon as well. The more we speak from that real, true, authentic place, people respond. Because it's real, it's true. It's not coming from like, I wonder what they want me to say? And I'm just going to say it that way. That doesn't feel good, to receive that kind of inauthentic message. Like, imagine if you're receiving a text message from a best friend. And you can tell when they're being inauthentic or they're authentic. You can tell when your sister or brother is being authentic, you can tell when your wife or husband is being inauthentic or authentic.

Miki:

And so it's just that, can we write copy, can we text, can we write our messaging in the same way as we're texting our best friend? And I think that is such an important way to think about messaging to people. Because we're just being bombarded with advertisements, with so much people shouting at us. And we don't want that. We want authentic truth, we just want that juicy truth. And I think that truth is really what, that truth, coupled with art, coupled with the right beautiful aesthetic, the right innovation that you would want to use where, on a daily basis. That together, creates change, creates culture shift. And I've seen that time and time again. Across Wild, across THINX and across TUSHY. All three of them share the same philosophy of best in class product, artful aesthetic design across every touchpoint of our brand, and accessible, relatable language across every touchpoint of the brand.

Brett:

I love it so much. And really, when you combine all of that, plus you go back to the starting point from your first book, Do Cool Sh*t, it has to be addressing something that sucks for you and sucks for a lot of people. Right? So it's got to be that. And so then, when it's addressing a real issue, and then you've got the artful design and best in class, and it works. And you got the accessible, relatable language. All that comes together and it just works.

Brett:

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Brett:

What's so interesting and what was so powerful for me. And I remember talking to the guy that was sitting next to me at CapCon, and I made a couple comments about this. I've been in the ad world for a long time. So there's the brand building space of advertising, which is interesting. There's direct response, which I followed and studied for a long time. And I've worked in the infomercial space and stuff. But you have this ability to create stuff that looks beautiful. Like, you just want to look at it. It's an ad for a bidet, but you want to look at it. But, it also kind of makes you say, I'd like to try that. Like, I would like a clean butt too. I would to do...

Brett:

Because I think sometimes people, they go too far into the art. And it's abstract, and like, I don't even know what you're trying to say to me. Or I'm talking about patent pending, and all aloof, and who cares. So, how do you strike that balance and how do you create something that's fridge-worthy? As you'd say, artful and fridge worthy. But also, that connects and makes you say, I want to buy that underwear. Or, I want to buy that bidet. How do you do that?

Miki:

Yeah. Well so first, just to quickly unpack the word fridge-worthy, for those who don't know what that term means. Fridge-worthy simply means the idea that, you know when you walk into your home, and you go to your kitchen and you see your fridge? You go out, before, you go to grab a beer or whatever from your fridge. You see your fridge, and on your fridge are emblems of your life. You see pictures of your family members, of your eight children in your 10 person family.

Brett:

They take up the whole fridge, exactly.

Miki:

Yeah [inaudible 00:31:16] all over. You have invitations to weddings, you have little postcards from family members, you have little pictures of nieces and nephews. Or whatever it is, right?

Miki:

Hi, Stan.

Miki:

And my challenge to my team has always been, can you create something so beautiful, so artful and so personal, that it can make the small real estate on your fridge? That it can really make that small personal space on your fridge, that it can take up that space. That you can make something for TUSHY or THINX so beautiful, something so cool, that it can live in your home in some way. And so we design from that lens. And from that lens that, again, hits you personally and makes you feel something.

Brett:

It does cause you to shift and think differently. Now it's not just about, well, I'm going to choose blue. Like, you're thinking about everything differently.

Miki:

Yeah. Like, what is it that's going to make, how does it make me feel? And that's a different lens to creating.

Brett:

For sure.

Miki:

Yeah.

Brett:

So then, how do you blend fridge-worthy then with some true sales power, or some power to make people say, I want to buy this.

Miki:

So I always say to my team, in the art of it, I still need to know. I mean, it depends. Like you said, there's top of funnel stuff, where you want to create intrigue and mystery. And that kind of stuff is like, if you look at our TUSHY Bellagio spot that we just shot. I just shot this ad, where I finally figured out, where my friend is this genius rigging person. And he rigged 10 toilets with bidets on them, with our TUSHY Ace bidets on them. That we can play them like a piano.

Brett:

Like the Bellagio fountains?

Miki:

Bellagio fountain.

Brett:

I got to see that, then.

Miki:

I'll share, I'll text with you right after this. It's crazy. And so basically, it plays. So we made this like, (Beethoven's 5th). And just this wildly weird thing. And we don't show you very much about it, but it just says at the tagline at the end. Which makes you mysterious and makes you want to click and see what the hell this is. So there's that mystery and intrigue, which hooks you into wanting to know more.

Brett:

It's a curiosity play, yeah.

Miki:

Pure curiosity play, pure top funnel. Just stuffing people in. And then we spend the rest of the time, really converting them to the bottom, bringing them down the funnel. Educating them on the product, the value propositions and all of that. So that's the one strategy.

Miki:

The other strategy for top of funnel. I always think about prospecting. I always think about, how do you get people to both fall in love with our brand, with our ethos, with our playfulness, with our just [foreign language 00:33:56], with our love of life? They can feel it in this thing, but they're also understanding, what is the product? How does it work? Why do I need it? So it really answers those questions. And maybe like, why do I need it?

Miki:

Like, we just shot another commercial with the singing toilets, with the kind of the playing toilets. Where, it's this very Wes Anderson, weird thing. Where it's like, five people laying, they stick their heads in the toilets at once. And they're laying on these, which kind of represents the heated seat. And then all of a sudden, we start spraying. Like, I start kind of smushing ice cream on this guy's face. And then, this one woman takes a chocolate cake and squishes it in her white glove. And then she smacks it on the ass of white pants on this guy. So it kind of represents all taking a shit, basically, the chocolate looks like shit. And then the sprays go off, and then we get clean. And it's this debaucherous clean thing. And then we press the blow dryer, and then we're getting blow dried. So you're seeing the value, of how it works. Like, you're seeing, we press the remote, and then the nozzles go off and it starts spraying. It's clean. And then you press the dry, then it just blow dries it. So you see slow-mo, the hair blow dried. We walk out frame. So you're kind of, you're getting the idea of what this thing is. But you're still intrigued, tickled. You feel good vibes, you feel "very good vibes". You know?

Brett:

You're probably laughing. You're probably like, I can't believe I'm watching this. But it's also product demonstration in a really fun and creative and crazy way, which is super cool.

Miki:

Yes. And so, it's a lot of things. And I always look at, what are our best performing ads? Our best performing ads are the edutaining ones. Ones that are hilarious, and the ones that educate. Tells you, why you need it, how it works and how to use it.

Brett:

Yeah, totally makes sense.

Miki:

You know? But in a really simple, easy way. And so, yeah, it is an art and science, and they have to go hand in hand. And, creative and marketing always do sometimes have this natural tension, but I think it's a good tension if you have the right leadership.

Brett:

It's a healthy tension.

Miki:

A healthy tension, yeah.

Brett:

Love it. So one thing you talk about a lot, and I remember you showing these examples. That, you'll use actual statements from real customers. And you also talk about campfire stories, sharing campfires stories as a team or whatever, to kind of stir up creativity. So, can you talk about that a little bit? Like, how do you use customer statements in your ads? And then, what about campfire stories?

Miki:

Yeah. So, I always think like, our best advocates are our customers, our users, who love our products. It just, it makes so much sense. And so many times, companies are scared to, they don't want to bother their customers. But if customers love it, and you're asking them, hey, just fill in the blank. THINX is blank. Or, TUSHY.

Brett:

This is my favorite, yeah. Just fill in the blank. TUSHY is, fill in the blank.

Miki:

Fill in the blank. TUSHY is, blank. Just fill in the blank. And within 24 hours, we got 1000 responses. For things specifically, it was, THINX is Mary Poppins in my pants. THINX is strength, freedom and dignity for all women. TUSHY is...

Brett:

One of them was, eye candy butt bliss. I wrote it down. I got the thing.

Miki:

Yeah, eye candy butt bliss. It's like, TUSHY: you could eat off my butt hole. You know? And just like, my rusty starfish has never been so clean. Stuff like that, where it's crazy, hilarious, random.

Brett:

Especially when you know that it was a real customer that said it. It's like, okay, that's super fun. And I'm now totally entertained by reading this.

Miki:

Yeah, by real. And we always say, name of the customer, from a real pooping human. And so, we now use these campaigns, as actual campaigns and taglines for our company. Because our customers know what's best. And we don't have to oftentimes scratch our heads to ask ourselves, what creativity can we use? We can literally just reach out to our customer base, and they'll give us, and they're delighted in giving it to us. And if they see it in the world, they'll be like, oh my God, that's my line. And they now feel even more connected.

Brett:

And then they totally will put that on the fridge. They will totally put that piece, and share with everyone they know.

Miki:

And they'll share it with all their friends, tell everyone they know. And it engages people, attracts them. The same thing with PR. I talk about that a lot. Like, we do a ton of inbound marketing, inbound PR. And we've gone viral so many different times. And it's because, again, studying the psychology of people. Like, how do you create intrigue? How do you create mystery? Where, they want to complete the storyline. So often, people are like, send press releases, and hope that the press will write about them. But it just never works. It piles up on people's desks. Versus, you send these mysterious boxes where you have to assemble this thing. Or like, unscramble a riddle. So recently, we just launched our TUSHY Ace, part of our electric bidet seat with the most beautiful remote in the world.

Brett:

It's the heated seat, right? Which by the way, if you've never experienced a heated toilet seat, it is pretty magical, it really is.

Miki:

Heated seat, warm water, blow dries your butt. Best blow dryer on the market. It's not like where you have to still use toilet paper, because this is a nice strong blow dryer. And it looks an Apple product. It's the most gorgeous remote. Our design, it's just, it's the most beautiful product. And so, we were launching this. And our team, we were like, okay, we are going to create mystery around this product. And so, we put together these deck of cards. And these deck of cards that we made, we made actual TUSHY deck of cards, designed by hand, by my designers. And we had this instruction sheet for the press. And we said, pull out all the royal flushes.

Brett:

Nice. Royal flushes.

Miki:

[crosstalk 00:40:03] And so, they'd pull out the royal flushes. And they had to unscramble the royal flushes, based on the riddles that they were given. Like, for the diamond royal flushes, this is the riddle. And you had to unscramble it based on the different words. The letters that appeared on the 10, jack, queen, king, ace. There was a letter hidden, that then unscrambled based on the riddle. So then, it made the press have to work hard to actually unscramble and send the responses. And then once they get the TUSHY Ace product and install it, they're going to feel they've accomplished something. Like, they actually, they feel so much better.

Brett:

And they're so engaged, and you've delighted them.

Miki:

They're so engaged.

Brett:

You've just made their day in so many ways.

Miki:

Instead of just sending them a product, review it. You're almost like, dance monkey, dance. Versus like, let me bring you into this fun, mysterious story with us. And we're going to be surprised and delighted together. And we're going this extra mile for you, to make you just regale in the delight. And I think that, that is what people want in life. They want to be just surprised and delighted. They want to be regaled. And like, "Oh!". And giggle. They want their heart to flutter.

Brett:

They want magic, they want mystery, they want excitement, they want to be kind of caught up in something. Right? Not just reading.

Miki:

Who doesn't want to be caught up in this ,"oh', moment. And it feels so good and it just enlivens our being.

Brett:

So, how did that work out? How was the press' reaction to that?

Miki:

Well I mean, this one, we just sent them out actually last week, so we're still underway. But guess what? The fact that we had almost, I think it was like 20 press asked for these cards. Because first, we were like, we're going to send you a mysterious package. Are you willing to take it? We need your home address, because we're COVID times. And so we had, almost 20 press gave us their home addresses, to send them the mystery packages. And so that already means that they're hooked. And we did this before, for THINX. Where we had people go and smash bricks, and they had to open the bricks and look for these invitations. And 80 people showed up to our event, after they smashed the THINX. 80 press RSVPed. We had another event, where we poked a hold in eggs, and put these mystery scrolls in them. And then all 20 press showed up to our event, because they wanted to crack open the egg and look at the scroll. And we said, you can't open them until you come to the event.

Miki:

So it's just, creating the mystery, creating the intrigue. It's human nature that, when they start something, they want to finish it. They don't like incomplete story lines, they like to complete story lines. And when there's an incompletion, there's still this intrigue, this mystery that keeps you wanting more. And so, we're in that storyline right now, with the TUSHY Ace, and I'll let you know how it goes, but I feel very confident.

Brett:

Yeah. That idea of opening and closing loops. Once a loop is open, people want to close and they want to figure out. They want to solve the mystery. That's why cliffhangers work, and all of those things.

Miki:

And in relationship and romance. When you're romancing, you're seducing. It's the same kind of storyline. It's so much fun, that game.

Brett:

Yeah. And I know you've got to go, so I've got two quick things. But I also want to mention, just briefly. You talked about two stories, two events. Because you're the master of doing these just crazy, off the wall events, that also work. So, one was ButtCon, and one was the Funeral for a Tree, for TUSHY. Are those outlined in one of your books? Because even if nothing else...

Miki:

Not yet.

Brett:

They're not? Oh, dang it. Okay.

Miki:

Not yet, but my next, maybe. I might have a Do Cool Sh*t sequel, and talk about TUSHY in that.

Brett:

We'll highlight that, or I'll find the story, that I can put. Anyway, I'll let the audience [crosstalk 00:43:41].

Miki:

I'm happy to share them really quick. I can share them over the next couple minutes, no problem.

Brett:

Okay, just do it quickly over the next two minutes, yeah.

Miki:

Sure, yeah. So again, it's all about creating unorthodox events, unorthodox gatherings. That make people go, "Huh? What are you talking about? What is this?" So we held two kind of events before COVID happened. And we're going to now resume them once COVID's now finally, hopefully at bay. But one of them was called A Funeral for a Tree. And the other one was called ButtCon. The Funeral for a Tree is, we actually held a real funeral for a dead tree at the Judson Memorial Church, which is the biggest memorial church in all of New York City. In Washington square park. We had a 400 seat capacity, and we sold out. And we had a 25 part choir. We had Matthew Morrison, the actor, is one of our dear friends, playing the reverend. We had his wife, Renee, who is one of my best friends as well, who played Maple, the wife of the dead tree. It was just the most wild experience. And the people who came...

Brett:

People were reading eulogies. Which, I got to hear one. It was hilarious. Just super funny and well done.

Miki:

I mean, it was just comedy. It was sad, it was beautiful, it was inspiring. It was all of the above, and people left so inspired to save trees. [crosstalk 00:45:14] And to do it by buying TUSHY, by doing all kinds. You know? But it wasn't a marketing...

Brett:

It didn't feel like a sales pitch. It didn't feel a, "Hey, here's your coupon for TUSHY." As you walk out the doors.

Miki:

For one second. It didn't feel like. It just felt TUSHY opened my eyes to these important things. [crosstalk 00:45:31].

Brett:

We are killing a lot of trees because of toilet paper, and here's how we can help solve that.

Miki:

That's right. 50 million trees are cut down every single year because of toilet paper consumption. 30 million cases of urinary tract infections, hemorrhoids. All these health hygiene issues, not to mention planetary issues. All these things could be alleviated by just using a bidet, using TUSHY, under $100 product. You know? But we didn't even say any of that stuff at our Funeral for a Tree event. That was, we just put on this amazing event, brought to you by TUSHY. And people just were like, this was the most inspiring theatrical event I've ever been to.

Brett:

You get an insane press on it.

Miki:

[crosstalk 00:46:07] ...

‍

They said, "What are you doing?"

Miki:

What are you doing here?

Brett:

And the press you got from both those events, to pay for that kind of exposure would be almost impossible. But you got it because you did some crazy stuff.

Miki:

Yeah. It was truly, again, another reminder that just, what you put in. When you put in, like, if you build it, they will come. And you have to build spectacles. Again, things that surprise and delight. Things that make people go, I need to go and see what this is about. And that's the most important thing.

Brett:

I love that, I love it. So I know, you've got to go. So just kind of in closing. If people are listening to this and they're like, I need more Miki Agrawal in my life. And so, where can they, one, go to find your books? But also, just experience your marketing. Because hopefully, this has opened your eyes a little bit. Like, you need to pay attention to what Miki is doing from a marketing standpoint, you're going to learn a lot. So, how can people get more Miki in their life?

Miki:

Yes. Well first, you can also always come check me out on Instagram where I answer most people's questions pretty directly. Like, people have questions, I'm pretty good about responding. So Instagram, just @mikiagrawal. You can also go to mikiagrawal.com. If you subscribe to my mikiagrawal.com page, you'll actually get one disruptive move every week to do for yourself and for your business. So it's 52 disruptive moves. So that's just on mikiagrawal.com. And of course go to helloTUSHY.com. Check it out, get a TUSHY bidet. It's the best gift of all time. Holidays, it's the gift. It's just the best gift you can do for yourself. I mean, period, end of story. From a health high hygiene, confidence, feeling sexy, feeling good perspective. And then you can also, oh, if you want to learn about the strategies. I mean, definitely, Do Cool Sh*t, Disrupt-Her, check out my books. But then, if you want to actually learn about all of my tactics, of all of my strategy and building my companies from zero to $100 million plus, I built an actual course called Zero to a $100 million on Mindvalley.

Brett:

Mindvalley, I'll link to that in the show notes.

Miki:

If you go to my link in bio on my Instagram, I link to a free masterclass, a one hour masterclass which goes into a lot of these campaigns. But then, it also links to the quest, the Mindvalley quest, Zero to a $100 million. So, definitely check it.

Brett:

Beautiful. Got to check it out. I got to check that out. I got to watch that. And I'm going through Disrupt-Her right now. I absolutely love it, I highly recommend it. I like the audio version. I'm an auditory learner. And you narrate the books, so I get to listen to more Miki as I'm driving around. So that's been awesome as well. So Miki, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for doing this. I've been inspired, and got some new ideas cooking around in my head. I know other people have too. So, really, really appreciate it.

Miki:

Yay. I was happy to be here.

Brett:

Awesome, thank you so much. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. What do you think about the show? What do you want to hear more of? Less of? Let us know. And until next time, thank you for listening.

Brett:

Are you a D2C brand spending over six figures a month on paid media? If so, then listen up. My agency, OMG Commerce, and I have worked with some of the top eCommerce brands over the years. Including Boom, Native, Groove, Monan, Organifi and dozens more. And every year, we audit hundreds of Google, YouTube and Amazon ad accounts. And we always find either significant opportunities for growth, or wasted ad spend to cut, or both. For example, are you missing YouTube ads? Whatever you're spending on top of funnel Facebook, you should be able to spend 30 to 50% of that or more on YouTube, with similar returns. So if you're spending 300,000 to 400,000 a month on Facebook, you should be able to easily spend a 100,000 to 150,000 or more on YouTube. Visit omgcommerce.com to request a free strategy session, or visit our resource page and get some of our free guides loaded with some of best strategies for YouTube Ads, Google Shopping, Amazon DSP and more. Check it all out at omgcommerce.com.

‍

Nick Shackelford was a pro soccer player for the LA Galaxy turned online marketing super star. You’ve probably seen him featured in FOUNDR magazine or speaking on stage of the wildly successful event he co-founded - Geek Out. 

‍

I first met him when we both spoke at Ezra Firestone’s event in Denver several years ago and I’ve been a fan ever since. Nick is a master of media buying. He knows how to build agencies. And he has a really fresh take on creatives. We go deep into his creative process in this episode. Here’s a look at what we cover:

‍

• How a lack of diversity in your ads could be killing your results.
• Nick’s agency’s creative process. This is pure GOLD.
• How to use Amazon reviews to jump start your creative process - This strategy is so simple, so effective, you’ll kick yourself for not having used it.
• How a tool called Monkey Learn can help you key in on the right words and hooks to use with your audience.
• Why audience targeting is nearly dead and creative is KING.
• How Nick uses Creative Strategist and why you should consider one too.
• How to work with the algorithm rather than against it.

‍

Mentioned in This Episode:

‍

Nick Shackelford

   - LinkedIn

   - Twitter

Geek Out
   - Website

   - Events

Konstant Kreative‍

Structured Agency

Design Pickle‍

No Limit Creatives‍

Penji‍

Video Husky‍

Chubbies‍

Facebook Dynamic Creative‍

Josh Durham‍

Groove Life‍

Aligned Growth Management‍

Necklet‍

Monkey Learn Word Cloud‍

Luca + Danni‍

Northbeam‍

Triple Whale‍

James Van Elswyk

Transcript:

Brett:

Welcome to the Spicy Curry Podcast, where we explore hot takes in e-commerce and digital marketing. We feature some of the brightest guests with the spiciest perspectives on how to grow your business online.

Brett:

In this episode, we talk about the creative process that will supercharge your Facebook and Instagram ads. My guest is Nick Shackelford. You've probably seen Nick on stage at one of your favorite e-commerce events, or you've seen him featured in Foundr Magazine or in a host of other places online. More about Nick in just a minute. In this episode, we talk about the fact that audience marketing is nearly dead and why creative is almost all that matters. We talk about how Nick uses creative strategists and how you should consider using one too. We talk about how Nick use Amazon reviews to kickstart the creative process. This approach is so simple, so effective, so powerful, you'll kick yourself for not having used it before. We'll also talk about a tool that you can use to choose the right words and the right hooks for your ads. Plus, we'll unpack Nick's entire creative strategy. So lean in, buckle up, and please enjoy this interview with Nick Shackelford.

Brett:

The Spicy Curry Podcast is brought to you by OMG Commerce, attentive, One Click Upsell, Zipify Pages, and Payability.

Brett:

Well, I am absolutely geeking out about this episode and this guest. That was a little bit of a pun, you'll find out more about that in a minute. But, longtime friend of mine, absolute rockstar in the space. If you're paying attention to digital marketing at all, you've probably heard of this guy or seen this guy or you've heard the name. And so, today I'm absolutely thrilled to have Nick Shackelford, aka The Shack, on the podcast. And we're going to dive deep into really several things related to marketing. And if you've been listening to this season one of the Spicy Curry Podcast, we're really talking about three things, right? Have something good to say, say it well, say it often. Regardless of what changes in the online world, you've got to do those things. And so we're going to talk about what's working now, what's not working now, how to crush it like Shack does.

Brett:

And so a couple of interesting things about Shack for those that may not know, he was a professional soccer player for the LA Galaxy, and then decided, "You know what? I want my field to be online marketing rather than running around the soccer field." And so we actually met. We met at Ezra Firestones event, right, Shack? We both spoke at Ezra Firestone's event. I don't remember where that was or when that was. Was it maybe Denver, I don't know, three or four years ago?

Nick:

It was. It was Colorado.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah. And I just remembered two things about you. One, you had an amazing strategy for influencer marketing on Facebook, two, you were rocking a killer hoodie, and three, you just had this swagger about you. And then as I've known you over the years, you always have a killer hoodie on. So what is the secret to getting great hoodies?

Nick:

Oh man, I actually am wearing one of them right now. This is an appropriate hoodie when you're just working at home 24/7. So this is [inaudible 00:03:41], which is another e-commerce brand that if you guys are in the space, they definitely do some interesting things. You should definitely talk to Davies. He's a smart, smart guy as well.

Brett:

Would love that intro, let's talk to him. You look like you're ready for a mountain expedition and/or you're ready just to chill at home and be super cozy.

Nick:

I like options, so the fact that I'm able to do both at a will is what I want to play with. But no, what you do, it's been fun to watch the growth of this, especially with the people that are doing it for a long time, because sticking with your theme of say it often, those that are usually saying it often are able to continue to be around because they've been preaching the same thing consistently. It might change a little bit, which trust me, I think 2022 so far, I mean, we're only 19 days into it. But yeah, there are a lot of things that have changed over the times, but we haven't stopped saying the same things, right?

Nick:

We talked about this at GeekOut. You came and you were like, "Hey, this is the consistent stuff that you have to do." And it's shocking... Maybe it isn't shocking, maybe it isn't. People forget what they have to continually do, and so reminding them over and over and over, they just might not be ready to hear it. So I always say, you always start with the basis so everybody's at the same page, but then you can get really to the nitty-gritty stuff, which you do so well, so I see you, brother, on this.

Brett:

Love it, man. Love it. So let's do this, we're going to dive into all the stuff you're doing right now on Facebook and Instagram and other platforms and what your creative genius is. And got an episode in season one here with Justin Brooke, my man, talking GDN, but I know I've seen him publicly say, "If you're not paying attention to Nick Shackelford, you're missing out, because Nick or The Shack knows what he's talking about." So tell me about GeekOut, or tell the audience. I know about GeekOut. I spoke at the last one in LA, and it was fantastic. I had so much fun, so much fun connecting with your group, with your audience. I could really nerd out or geek out. But tell me about that event and kind of what's ahead for this year.

Nick:

I absolutely will. Yeah, I was very fortunate you made it out there. GeekOut started five years ago now, and it started with the fact that I couldn't go to my partner and tell her, "Oh, babe, look at these campaigns. Oh my gosh, isn't this great?" Roll her eyes, she just didn't really care as much. And then [inaudible 00:06:04] James, he felt the same way. So we were geeking and nerding on all these things. We have a different vibe about ourselves, and what I mean... I literally have to explain this. We have the ability to deliver content and aggregate a room of people that want to learn, make money, and continue to build their business, but still feel open to talk about, "Hey, my employee just sued me," or "I'm going through this issue with my partner," or "I'm going...." these really intimate things that you don't feel comfortable expressing unless you're in a room that's safe and comfortable.

Nick:

And it just started happening organically, because I'm that way, right? I'm okay with things being very public. There's a couple things that I don't want to have super public, but I'm pretty much 99% out there on every channel because I do believe building in public builds relation, and there was no better way for us to do this except doing it in person. So this started, again, five years ago, and I remember we did it in Las Vegas literally on a couch. We thought we were renting a mansion, of course. Like all things in Vegas, you thought it was, and we figured what it really was. We got there, and I remember there was a putt-putt. One of the selling propositions on Airbnb was, "Oh, use our little putting green, and it was amazing." It was two holes, and I'm like, "Oh my God, what are we're going to do?"

Nick:

So we had a good run, but the thing that we never lacked was the quality of content. And so we've ran it back. We've done Tel Aviv. We've done Barcelona. We've done LA, Miami, New York, and we're gearing up for this year. We will be the only event that will do, I think, double digits of events this year. We're planning for 10. I think we'll probably, knock on wood because of where the world is currently at, get about six. And the first one starts in Dubai right before Affiliate World, and then we'll bring it back in for San Diego and Miami. Brett, I think I told you this before, it's the one business that I have that makes me the least amount of money but brings me the most amount of happiness, because you truly get a seed connection, and it's something that we've really, really gotten away from in the world for the various reasons that all of us are experiencing together, but it's just become way more important to me.

Brett:

Yeah, it was just phenomenal. I can't wait. I've been talking to my team about it. I've been bugging you for dates, because I'm blocking these out. I'm coming to speak at as many of these as I can or attend those that I can't speak at. It was just an amazing place to be, other like-minded, super smart marketers. I know you've had this experience. You were talking about talking to your partner. You can't really talk about ROAS. She doesn't care, right? I can't talk about ROAS to my wife. She glazes over. But you become acutely aware of how many acronyms we use in this space, right? ROAS, LTV, AOV, CLV. It's never ending, but this is your people. You can geek out about any of those things, but you can also talk about deeper stuff, people stuff, preparing for exits, buying companies. It's an awesome group, testament to you and to James, but just high level people, man. I would put it on the short list. If you could only attend a couple events this year, make sure one of them-

Nick:

[inaudible 00:09:22].

Brett:

... is GeekOut. I can edit this out later if I need to. Is there a rebrand coming too? Is it going to be GeekOut, is going to be something else? Or should we talk about that?

Nick:

Yeah, absolutely, we should. It's going to be called a GeekUp for two reasons. One, we have to level up, and so adding in that geek element is something that we still want to keep. And two, there was already a trademark called GeekOut Events. So as much of the branding I want you guys to be like, "Oh wow, that's so clever," I'm like, "Well, we kind of got into a situation."

Brett:

We're geeking out and leveling up. We're geeking up. This is amazing. Yeah, that's [inaudible 00:09:58]. Well, its going to be... I don't care what you call it, but GeekUp is super cool too. So if you attend only a few events, make sure one of them is GeekUp. And so I'll link to everything in the show notes. You can google it and check it out and stuff like that too. So fantastic, man. Any other notes on the event itself?

Nick:

Well, okay, so the segue into what I'm focused on a lot right now outside of the three businesses is we started GeekUp because it was about sharing and learning and getting that feedback of what's happening, and that led me to Konstant Kreative. We have almost our first year under our belts, and it's purely content because... Dude, you're a YouTube guy. You do good YouTubes. We don't do YouTubes, but we do a lot of Facebook, and we do a lot of Instagram, and we do a lot of TikTok, and we do a lot of Snapchat. And I used to be such a big teacher and proponent of strategies and hacks and tactics. I'll raise my hand here, I was one of the biggest people talking about various hacks and strategies 2017, '18, '19. 2020, I got a little quieter. 2020, I got real quiet. In 2022, I'm on that same quiet band because it just isn't as sustainable as it once was. I don't want to say we did this on purpose, but I like to think I did or had a feeling, my spider senses, for the new Marvel movie, which is fantastic, is tingling, and I was like, "Dude-

Brett:

That is a good movie. And actually, quick side note, the new, or new-ish, depending on when you're listening to this, Spiderman movie got us into the whole Marvel series. We watched Spiderman No Way Home, and then now we're going back to the beginning. We're, I think, three movies into the... It's like 30 movies. If you do chronologically through the Marvel series, it's nuts, but my family and I, we're going through it all, so it's super fun.

Nick:

Oh my God, I am not a movie person, but I will watch though. It's culture. It's so culture. Okay. What put us into this position was understanding that content was never going to leave us, and so we put so much time and effort into building. We weren't first to do it. There's Design Pickle. There's No Limit Creatives. There's Penjee! There's Video Husky. There's so many other people that do this content on demand thing, but we had to do it ourselves, because arguably, I've never gone through a pandemic. I'm 31 years old. I didn't know what would happen if I couldn't understand how much revenue was being driven by each one of our employees across our entire company because I didn't know what I needed to go potentially [inaudible 00:12:26] so I didn't know what loans I needed to go get.

Nick:

I needed to know that I could do a dollar earned or average per each one of our employees contributing to the bottom line. Sometimes in just an agency space or sometimes in business space, you have admins or project managers that might not directly tie to bottom line. We know they impact it, but we don't really know what they drive. Designers are another one. Editors are another one. Copywriters are another one. Unless you're in this performance tower, you know each email or each thing you write, you get dollars back on. If you aren't structured that way, you're like, "Dude, I don't really know how much money's coming in from these people." So we actually built this service and fed it to ourselves. And I think the term is dog feeding ourselves.

Brett:

Yeah, so this is a Google term. So it's called eating your own dog food. They borrowed it from Purina or Puppy Chow or something like that, where literally that company, they would eat their own dog food. It's a metaphor for using your own stuff, right?

Nick:

Okay.

Brett:

You believe in your product so much, you use it. Yeah.

Nick:

Oh, so thank you. I actually didn't know where that was coming from, and I'm glad you [inaudible 00:13:29]. We built it for ourselves because content... If you're like, "Nick, what are you about right now?" it's content, and it's volume of content at a cost effective rate. Listen, before the pandemic hit, a lot of people didn't really open up their mind to the quality of support, quality of company building that you can do offshore. I'm not saying outsource. This is a complete different thing. Outsource to offshore is completely different. Offshore are full-time your employees, your people, your values, your systems, your processes. Outsource is white labeling. You don't know what's going on. They're delivering you something, you're going to wrap in a bow, you're going to deliver. So I'm going to be very clear on that.

Nick:

This was something that when we started to understand quality of talent allowed us on the agency side to operate at 35, 40, 55% margin at times on various months, you can do the same exact thing on a content iteration, say. The only issue that a lot of people don't get right when they're like, "Hey, I need a performance editor," or "I need a performance creative person," it's because they themselves don't know what they want. Here's why. There's a subjectivity in this that everybody can't get away from in the romanticism toward a brand they own or towards the content that's being shot. I'm sure you experience this, or do you?

Brett:

Absolutely. Totally. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes we are our own biggest enemy, or often the brand owner is their biggest enemy in terms of getting creatives that work, creatives that actually connect and compel and move people to take action. Yeah, sometimes we're romantic about what we think that structure should be or what we think that message should be rather than focusing on... Let's not do something that's completely off brand, of course, but let's do what works. And sometimes you have the brand, or sometimes the agency gets in the way of that.

Nick:

It's so true because we're hired to do two things. Now, if you're hiring a branding agency or hiring a shop that needs to be really up here and be oh, really meta on things, God bless. I'm not in the space to where I can afford to create something that doesn't drive revenue. You're in the same boat. We have to validate the costs that we have for a lot of our partners. And so when you have this subjective idea of what happens, and I'll get into what testing, what we're doing now, what 2022, at least the bets that I'm making in this first quarter on how we're building out our testing and how we're building out our, at least our internal content structure. And actually, I'll fucking go into all the things, because I think the more that this information gets out there, it might actually spark some interest on your side, and you might have some interesting feedback for me too, so-

Brett:

Totally, totally. We're going to talk about one thing really quickly, and then I want to dive into the specifics.

Nick:

Okay.

Brett:

Actually, two things really quickly. What'd you say the name of the company was, the content company?

Nick:

Oh, Konstant Kreatives. Sorry.

Brett:

Konstant Kreatives. Awesome. We'll link to that in the show notes as well. But I could not agree with you more, right? I think in fact, back when we first met in Denver at Ezra's event, a lot of people were talking about hacks and here's little tricks and tips and things you can do to make Facebook and YouTube and all that work. And certainly, there's always going to be some hacks, but success is way more, way more about having great creatives, sticking to the fundamentals, and just being relentless, relentless on testing, relentless on looking for new angles, and then really just being consistent in what you're doing and doubling down on what's working. And so love that you're doing that. I got to learn more about your company there too so I can refer some people to you. But yeah, so let's dive in there. What is your process then for finding the right angle and getting that... Because you talk about volume of creatives too, right? You got to be testing pretty frequently, especially on Facebook. Not as much on YouTube, but especially on Facebook and Instagram. What's your process like?

Nick:

This is something that we think is an ongoing debate, kind of ongoing analysis. Let's think of it this way, you used to go to optimize campaigns at an ad level or an ad set level or even the structure of the campaign level, and we're having to do a lot of this before we even get to the campaign launch. What I mean by this is, before the conversation of cancel culture or before the conversation of inclusion really was being had, a lot of the ads that we saw were generally white males, white females across every brand, across every company, thin, thinnish, and you didn't really think about, "What if [crosstalk 00:17:49]

Brett:

Which is really just silly. But you're right, that's just the way it was. Yes, it was crazy.

Nick:

Yeah, it was silly. Listen, I'm not ignorant to who I am and what I am, but when you look at brands that are buying this, brands don't have this data. You can't run a quiz to be like, "Hey, what do you... " I guess you could, technically, but I don't know how it would come across us. "Who do you identify with? Or what do you identify as? Or what race are you?" You can't necessarily ask that, but that's the type of [inaudible 00:18:17] that you have to get done. Say, when we give a shoot or when we give content for others to see, "Hey, what do we need?" We usually recommend, "Hey, we need two different races and two different genders, and we need sizes of those genders to be appropriate to what we actually think is our customers buying."

Nick:

It's a great example, the Team Chubbies. Chubbies makes unbelievable male board shorts. I think they get an underwear too now, but makes male board shorts. And if you watch the progression over time of who was used in their content, fit male, white or black, fit male, white or black, little thicker, white or black, little dad bod, white or black, little larger, white or black. Do you know why? Because they're looking at all the-

Brett:

That's their audience, right? How many fit dudes are out there? Right? Most of us have dad bods. Not you, you're a former soccer player, but yeah, dad bods are everywhere.

Nick:

These are the frat guys that are buying it. And they literally... I've listened and watched the progression of this, and they're like... I'm sure that some people want to aspire to look great, but there's a point where you can get turned off by this, and you're like, "That's not really who I am." So it's this progression, this conversation of the testing begins at the inclusion of what's in the content. That's just a side note. I went on a tangent. I apologize there.

Brett:

Yeah, but I love it. I'll just, I'll key in on that. And so it's a side note, but it's important. A buddy of mine runs an athleisure business and they sell a lot of leggings. And so their models are very diverse, Latinos, African Americans, whites, every race, but also normal looking people, right? These are not all 98 pound supermodel. It looks like normal people, but they're joyful and they're smiling. And they are killing it because people look at it and say, "Well, that's me. That's my body type. That's my style." And it's so needed right now, so I'm really glad you brought that up.

Nick:

It's so true. And it kind of goes down to the typical structures that we run if I were to get a little technical in this. We still launch with dynamic creative. We still launch with... Dynamic creative is probably the first step. If we don't have a full hard belief, and this is the campaign structure, if we don't have a full hard belief in any one direction, whether it's like, we know this is worked in the past, but we're just trying to iterate on the value prop, or we're just trying to iterate on the USB, the box opening, we're just trying to iterate on a specific thing, we will still let Facebook choose or dictate the direction we need to go into up into-

Brett:

So by dynamic creatives, you just mean you're... Explain that for people that don't know the Facebook platform well.

Nick:

Thank you very much. So when launching a campaign, there's DCT, dynamic creative testing, which is a tool that you let Facebook choose. Essentially, you're going, "Hey, we don't want to impose any campaign restrictions to force spend," let's say on an automatic budget campaign, an ABO. You go, "I just need you to spend all my budget on these specific creatives that I, the media buyer, have told you I want you to spend on." And CBO can do that too with a little bit of limitations, but that's easiest communication I can give you on that. The dynamic creative testing [crosstalk 00:21:11]

Brett:

You're basically saying, "Hey, here's our creatives, and Facebook, you go wild and you find the winner."

Nick:

Exactly. We are not imposing a restriction on where money can be spent. We're letting the campaign dictate that. And that is... It's basically taking away the bias that we have of letting Facebook say, "Hey, we have this algorithm, we have this info, we have these consumers, and we're going to run this type of campaign on it."

Brett:

Yeah.

Nick:

Now I will have some of my media buyers look at me and go, "Chef, I won't always run this route," but that's the baseline that we start with, because if somebody has pushback on me, say, let's say David or Scott have a conversation, they're like, "Nick, I actually believe that's not the best use of this campaign, because we're only trying to compare two main concepts." And we'll say, Bernie says, "We'll use the athleisure brand here." We want to understand which color way of these leggings are going to be the one that hits or which price point of these leggings are going to hit. That doesn't need to be dynamic creative tested. That needs to be controlled and tested equally across the board. So that to me has probably been the biggest change. Before, I would launch all with minimum campaign budgets or some sort of structure where we're going audience testing, kind of put that after the fact, because it's not as impactful unless it's going to be purely based on the content or creative and the structure when you go live with it.

Brett:

Yeah. I love that. And so really, I mean, if you look at what is our job as advertisers, whether we're agencies or in house or solopreneur, whatever the case may be, our job is to make great creatives, but to feed the algorithm, to let the algorithm, whether that's Facebook, YouTube, or Google, let... The algorithm's smart. And in the long run, the algorithm's going to do a better job than you are in a lot of ways, so how can you feed it and give it enough creative so that it finds the winners? Or how can you do a very specific test? Like you were talking about, right? I'm testing two creatives, because I'm trying to find is it black or is it pink on the leggings that are going to hit, or is it this price or that price? That type of thing, a controlled test, but either way you're trying to say, "I don't know the answer here on what creative's really going to work, but we're going to find out." And then once we find out, then we're going to go all in on that, so-

Nick:

Because you and I both have these conversations with brands that talk about, "Hey, what's your brand book? What's your stance? What do you stand for? And they have the idea of who they want their customer to be, but it's not always what Facebook will agree to be or Google will agree for it to be. You have to let the replies come in. You have to let the data speak for itself. And I'm shocked. And I don't know if this is in your portfolio, we have about 116 brands right now, 117, I believe. The amount of post-purchase surveys on where you've heard from me or what information they're gathering is probably less than 15%.

Brett:

Totally, a very few of our clients are doing them. I think you've got to do it though, because you're going to be surprised by the answers you find out.

Nick:

Exactly, especially understanding touch points now the attribution is dropping a little bit, touch points and understanding where these people are coming from or how much I should be allocating per channel. We had a very, very intelligent brand, I'll say maybe 2020s, called Rove Concepts, which are a large... It's a larger retailer. It's a furniture, so purchase path takes a lot of time. You got to include your partner. A lot of it is generated interest on Facebook, but a lot of it is actualized on Google, XYZ. And these guys were making... This is the first company or brand that came to Jake myself and goes, "You know what? I understand that we gave you these [inaudible 00:24:37] a platform. I don't know if you guys are actually impacting the bottom line because it shows Google having way more conversions than you guys." I'm like, "Heck is going on?" I'm like, "Well, okay, I get it. I'm sure there's... It's an expensive piece. There's thousands of dollars. Can we just put surveys on the back of this? Or do you have this already live, or can you share this information?"

Nick:

A lot of what we started to see was, although that might not have popped up in the platform, a lot of it was saying I heard first about you on Facebook or Instagram, yet the conversion value, all the revenue was coming from Google. And I'm going, "You can't tell me to stop or that's going to be lowered." So we did a hard test turning off paid social, top of funnel. What do you know? Numbers dropped. Yeah, we wouldn't have been able to cover [crosstalk 00:25:22]

Brett:

Yeah, it's so true. I was just talking to a buddy of mine, Josh Durham, who used to be the head of growth at Groove Life and at an agency, and he talked about the same thing, doing those post purchase surveys and realizing that, man, 70, 80% of customers are going to say, "Hey, I first heard you on social, I first heard you on YouTube," or something like that. And I love Google, right? I'm a Google guy, but search and shopping sometimes takes the credit, especially branded search. You need to run it, but branded search often takes credit for a sale that, really, Facebook or YouTube generated, right?

Nick:

Sure. Preach to the choir [inaudible 00:25:59]

Brett:

Yeah, yeah. So, hey, I want to circle back to creative really quickly, and then we can talk attribution again in a minute, because there's some important notes there. As far as creatives go, what is your process? How are you guys coming up with hooks for the actual creatives, and what types of creatives are you launching with? I just want to give people ideas on what should they be testing next or how should they go about their creative process, or how should they talk to their agency to get them to do things more like you guys? Can you talk about your creative process a little bit?

Nick:

I can, yeah. We have one baseline process that we run with or usually use outside of if someone already gives us [inaudible 00:26:39]. Say a brand was coming to us and they already really had, "Hey, we know who our girl or guy is. Here's what we've learned outside of optimizing and looking at the current campaigns," we start with this process where we begin on Amazon, we begin with Reddit, and we begin with competitors. We don't go to the own brand stuff just yet, because we don't want any biases coming in from marketing messages that consumers might be regurgitating back. If you look at Amazon, there's very honest reviews at one star, two star, and even the three star, very honest reviews that use layman's terms that are common, that they're looking for solutions or points. And a lot of it on Amazon, actually, they don't really care about the brand itself. From the experience, from the information I have, they're not necessarily going to Amazon to find Lulu Lemon, they're going to Amazon to price shop. They're going to Amazon for the efficiency and the effectiveness of getting that product as quick as possible.

Nick:

You're not going there looking for a specific brand. You're usually typing in the product in which you need. Hydration packets, coats, clothing, that's the things that you're really searching for, so you usually get people that don't really about crap about who the brand is or what, and they're not going to hold back from you, because it's pretty anonymous at that point, or what have you. So what we started to find out is, before a brand would come to us and before they're like, "I don't know what talking points or hooks or explanations that need to be in this piece of creative," we go to the Amazon reviews. We probably export between 50 to a hundred. We drop it into a word cloud.

Brett:

So you're looking at the actual reviews from those customers or from competitors and from that category as a whole?

Nick:

Correct. Thank you very much to the clarification. We do not go to the brand own yet. We go from the competitors of the same exact product. So if I'm selling leggings, I'm going to the number one competitor with the most amount of reviews, similar in the legging side. I want to know why this product is winning. I want those five stars and four stars, isolate those by themselves. And I want those one stars and two stars, isolate them by themselves. I use three as a lever if I don't have clear messages of things to say or not say based on the four and fives, and the ones and twos.

Brett:

Got it.

Nick:

Four and five might be skewed.

Brett:

Right.

Nick:

One to twos might be skewed, but the threes might you my answer if I don't find it in the two buckets tracking with me.

Brett:

Totally. And this is brilliant by the way. I absolutely love it, yeah, because you're looking for real pain points, real motivators, real things that customers care about, and you're looking for their language, which just makes all the difference in the world.

Nick:

Because we are going to do market stuff. We're going to try and be cool and cute and playful. We'll do our best to not, but we sometimes fall into these categories. And I'll use one brand for this called Necklet. Necklet created a latch system that's magnetic that allows for stacks of jewelry to not get tangled. Brilliant. For women, or men, mainly for women that are wearing necklaces that don't want it to be tangled because they want to wear multiple, it's absolutely brilliant. It's genius. And the mechanism is a magnet on the back. What is it solving? Is a magnet strong enough? Is it latching? Does it pull your hair? These things are questions that the brand might not necessarily know. But guess who's going to know? The people that are buying it and the people that are leaving those reviews on Amazon. They [inaudible 00:29:51] will tell you exactly how feeling, whether this is a dumb concept or not.

Nick:

So we found out a lot of this. No matter how beautiful it might look, no matter how the feeling of joy might be portrayed, the mechanism is still the most unique value proposition for them, so we better go speak specifically towards. That, to me, was after we got from a competitors, put it into a word cloud. I think the easiest one you guys could use is probably Monkey Learn. It's called monkeylearn/wordcloud. I think you have to potentially set up an account. It's free, but if anybody else has a word cloud generator that is better than that, please hit me up. I'm always looking for more tools.

Brett:

Monkey Learn, and you're looking for... And this is like a word cloud builder?

Nick:

Yeah. So it's called Monkey Learn, and then it's a forward slash word-cloud or wordcloud. I'm not sure exactly on [inaudible 00:30:36], but I can pull it for you right after this. And that way, I'm able to aggregate all my star reviews. I would say it's easier if you... The more, the better. The more, the more accurate. Drop it into this word cloud, and it's going to generate and pull up the most commonly used words and tones. And that way, now here's your messages. Here's your information. Here's the things that you need to use. This, Brett, I'm telling you, this thing has allowed processes. Because if you don't know where to begin, that's where you go right away.

Brett:

Yeah, because if you don't have something like this, you're just going to begin with that discussion around the boardroom. It's going to be virtual, right? But you're talking to the client, you're talking to the brand owner, you're talking to the marketing director, and you're like, "Well, hey, our customer is this, and they believe this and they want that." And that's valuable, but this is amazing, where you're saying, "Okay, let's see what the people, the real customers are actually saying, and let's aggregate that. And let's look for tone and let's look for actual words." Yeah, just absolutely brilliant. I love it.

Nick:

The next step that we take from is... Say we already have this, say somebody already has this understanding, the next step that we have here is, where are you lacking? Where do you think your brand or your audience has not been addressed? This is usually right where we get in the conversation of inclusion, usually where we get in the conversation of, it seems like we're over indexed on a certain demographic, a certain gender, certain size. That, to me, is something that we really, really spend a great amount of time. We're very fortunate. We're in LA, so we have a melting pot of people to pull from, and that's something that we know, as a unique advantage, we have to leverage. So that generally is our second conversation that we have, of like, where can we do some tests to where we're not doing something that's not on brand, we're not doing something that we have fear of isolating a consumer, but we have the ability to actually get real learnings in a direction that we never ran before. Here's an example, Luca Danni, which is [inaudible 00:32:29]. It's a bangle and accessory company, bracelet.

Brett:

It's called Luke and Danni? Did I hear that right?

Nick:

Yeah. It technically reads Luca Danni, but Luke and Danni is what it is, and they sell bangles, they sell bracelets. Well, in this test, they usually always show the wrist, and it's the wrist of the woman buying it and the various women buying it. And they actually started seeing a little bit of a performance increase on the thicker in which the wrist began to [crosstalk 00:32:59]

Brett:

Interesting.

Nick:

And I'm like, why is this? Then you look at the export of the purchasing behavior of the people buying it. You have the strong representation of the Bible bell, strong representation of the south, strong representation of a little bit of the east coast. But you're like, "Wow, okay. I think some of our demographics are not the assumed thinner audience that we once believe there to be, so how do we mix this up?" So now we have wrists of all shapes and sizes. You hear me?

Brett:

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're there. I thought I lost you for a minute. Yeah, so wrists of all shapes. This is so important. What's really interesting, I going to key in on something that Ezra Firestone mentioned to me a couple years ago, where they notice, BOOM!, their brand BOOM! and Cindy Joseph, it's really women over the age of 50, skin care, makeup, and really good stuff, but they found... They thought, "Well, what if we went a little bit younger with our models, or a little bit younger with our ambassadors that we have in the videos." And they started getting complaints. People were reaching out saying, "That's not me. This person is younger than me." Right? We sometimes forget that people really are looking for, "Can I see myself in this video? Can I see myself in this product. And is this for me?" And if it's not, then they're likely not going to buy, right? And so fascinating test, that, hey, thicker wrists, bigger wrists lead to better results. Diversifying your models leads to better results. You got to explore and got to test. That totally makes sense.

Nick:

Anybody can do this too. That's probably the biggest thing that I want to drive home, is those testing of using Amazon first and Reddit first because the natural communication, community already being built there within your competitors. It's not rocket... The way you present that information, the way you speak to it really will pull in on the expertise that you have, but this isn't rocket science, man. We have anywhere between 100 to 150 brands at any time. And if anybody's looking for analysis of their creative or performance or angles or whatever they're taking, they go this direction, because they know they can get it, they can get it quick, and they don't need to wait on other people to do it. So it's something I would definitely like to pass that forward.

Brett:

Yeah. Love it. What else? What do you see working on Facebook right now? And I know that this stuff has a tendency to be short lived, but in terms of length of videos, what are you finding that's working, or maybe, maybe there's different links, different angles for cold traffic versus remarketing? What are some of the kind of tips and ideas you're seeing there?

Nick:

Well, I'm going to caveat this [inaudible 00:35:25]. We are using two tools. So we're using North Beam and we're using Triple Whale, because we are making-

Brett:

Both fantastic tools.

Nick:

I completely agree. We have to make sure that we're looking at the correct amount of information or data and it's purely based upon a third party tool that's giving me the direction of, okay, this campaign, this ad set, this purchase path is making the most sense for us, so-

Brett:

Yeah. And just a quick note here, because I know the guys at North Beam and at Triple Whale, great platforms, but I'll talk North Beam for just a second. The way it works, it's basically first party data. So they put a first party pixel on your site, they put DNS record there where now they can have an infinity timeframe-

Nick:

Yes.

Brett:

... click attribution, right? So instead of attribution being only seven days, right? So after click happens, and after seven days, Facebook can no longer track it. With something like North Beam or Triple Whale, you track it forever, right? And you can go back and say, "Hey, this one YouTube click or this one Facebook click led to a customer who bought 20 times." Right? You can see all that data, because then these tools integrate with Facebook, Google-

Nick:

Yes.

Brett:

... Shopify, your email platform. They pull all that stuff together. So anyway, this isn't a commercial for those tools. We don't make anything from those tools, but you need that data to know what's really working and what's not.

Nick:

Well, we never used to have... We always needed this.

Brett:

We both needed it, yeah. And [crosstalk 00:36:42]

Nick:

We can get close without it. And now we can't. So now when I'm looking at campaigns, so I'm looking at what's working. Right now, let's go January 19th, 11:50 AM, Wednesday, 2022. What's working right now is images. I'm now getting images with plain background colors, bold colors. I'm saying yellow blues, pinks and purples, and big bold text. Call outs of the pain points of the consumer. And if I were to be more specific, this is primarily top of funnel, and we're having very minimal branded elements here, because all I'm trying to do is build engagement, build a little bit of direction that I'm trying to go in this place, it's just the right path for me to go down towards, and it is the quickest thing that can be launched. It is the easiest thing that can be made.

Brett:

Yeah.

Nick:

Pain points, value propositions, big, bold colored text, and maybe, if you really want to include it, what does the product look like? Is can just be a product on a white image or somewhere the left or right side of things. We're using this top of funnel aggressively for two reasons. One, if we can get the engagement, and if we can get some sort of understanding of people agreeing with it, or maybe it say other way, not agreeing with it, but that you're usually just seeing the comments, the shares or the engagement overall, I know I'm on the right path. I need to make an image or a more detailed image, shorter video or longer form video to run top of funnel. This is Facebook specifically. So our launching period right now is major callouts with the value propositions or with pain points that we believe for each brand with that color text to kind of pop off page. Second, if that is already being done or something that's already going down that path, we are going with 30 to 45 second videos.

Nick:

I was a huge proponent of sub 30, generally around 15 seconds, but I need this bigger audience for people to pull from, because things on platform, the pools of remarketing are not as quality as they once were because of the drop in reporting. So the more that we can have people engaging or watching the videos longer, I'm running all of our remarketing, or at least our reengagement middle of funnel, off of these audience and pools of creative that we're actually spending more time, that these consumers are spending more time on.

Brett:

Got it. So you're running... So yeah, I remember, and I'm not a Facebook guy, but I remember people talking about, "Hey, shorter creatives are working 15 seconds and things like that," which I'm sure is still the case to a certain degree. But what you're saying, and this totally makes a lot of sense, is 45 seconds, 30 seconds to 45 seconds to your cold traffic audiences, because then you can remarket to people that have watched half of that or all that or whatever the case may be, and now that's a much better audience than maybe the remarketing audiences you would get from someone who engages with a 15 second video. Did I understand that correctly?

Nick:

You did, because we need the... Well, for just a stronger audience. And I don't know what happened. I think the biggest thing that we've seen, if we're talking remarketing, the content, I'm not too sure. I wouldn't feel comfortable speaking about what's working across the board for our brands because it's very [inaudible 00:39:44] and very particular.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah.

Nick:

But one thing that is been a constant is, we need more periods of time. We used to be able to be very segmented, and like, "Cool. One to seven day, you're going to get this message. 8 to 14, you're going to get this message. 15 and on, you're going to get this. It's not working for us. We can't get... I hope it is for others because it was so incredible to push them down a purchase path, but we're going 30 days, 45 days, the largest pull in which we can get from, I think the largest pull is probably around 90, but the biggest pull that we can pull from, I want that to be my remarketing pull, and it's just a mixture of various engagement testimonials of videos of them reinforcing the product or the brand. That's the only thing that I know I can get some consistent benchmarks on, because other than this, there's just no consistency.

Brett:

Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. And as platforms are being more restricted on audiences they can build and how they track and how they report, I think in a lot of cases, we're just going to have to simplify, right? Some of the hyper segmentation of this seven day audience, 14 day audience, 30 day audience, some of that is going away. We're seeing that on Google too, actually, so I think that's probably pretty widespread at this point. Going simpler, going broader makes sense. How are you coming... Because I know, especially on Facebook, Facebook is hungry for new creatives, new concepts. How do you go about refreshing content so regularly and finding winning angles? Any insights there on process that you can share?

Nick:

So I don't have a... Ah, I got some stuff. So I don't have a firm one on this because it really is going to depend on budget. So I'll put a caveat there. The more money you have, the general amount of testing that you can do at higher volume. The only difference between a big budget and a little budget is that a big budget learns quicker, so it's no difference. The process is [crosstalk 00:41:37]

Brett:

You're doing the same things. It's just the speed at which you're doing them is what the budget really dictates.

Nick:

Exactly. Exactly. So I want to put, "Oh that's my brand is not spending 25,000, 50,000, whatever it is." I can't do that. You can, you just can't do as much or as quick. We did start the Konstant Kreative, why we built this is because we believe that there's an internal revision of content. There's an internal revision in planning of strategy for content. And then there's a marketing message. Generally, if it's evergreen, without talking about mother's day, father's day one-off moments, if the general process is happening, we are iterating on a seven day and a ten day window. Let me explain. Our current organization structure is, we operate in a pod system. So we have our copywriter, our senior media buyer, junior media buyer account manager, and channel specific buyers that we need to plug in.

Nick:

But the general makeup is admin, media buyers, strategist. We then started to build a new department, which is our creative strategist. Their core role is to analyze campaign performance on creative specifically. They don't care about the audience. They don't care about interests. Just the performance of the creative. Give that feedback into the client. Give that feedback into our creative director to shoot more content. And their job is to come up with the concepts of, "Here's why here's where I think the angles are going to be going towards." Now, it's various and different for all because the budget's going to be different for all, but it's usually out of two things. The increase of quality of life, that's one core concept, core understanding. Why is this product going to increase the value of my life or make my life better? Then, in the same flip side is, if I don't have this, how terrible or how poor or how unfortunate or how much struggle will my life have?

Nick:

So with those two deciding factors of how much I'm going to increase or how much I'm going to decrease, then we come into the concepts of positioning for each one of these products. So with that frame of mind, we have a seven day sprint to a ten day sprint of analysis, seven days to get the campaign running and live. First two, generally speaking, are not spending a tremendous amount of money, unless something works or unless we have... This is a commitment that the brand or us have [inaudible 00:43:48]. We are spending this money. We got to learn. I say 10 days because there's a little bit of updates attribution. You know, if you're running Facebook, data comes in very sporadically, so we want a little bit more time to run this. It's unfortunate because, at least for our team right now, gone are the days of launch a campaign on one day, slam budget on the second day, turn the campaign off on things that didn't work by the third day. That's more drawn out to a five day, seven day [crosstalk 00:44:14].

Brett:

Yeah. Totally.

Nick:

So if I sat there and go, the analysis that the creative strategy team needs to be doing is on that three day, five day, seven day, ten day window, because that's going to include a full week plus weekends and give you back on that Monday, because you're usually not going to get that launch data on that early, early day. To me, this is an ongoing iteration, it's an ongoing sequence of conversation with the brands, and I'm actually doing a pretty decent case study on what's happening on this. I'm going to unveil it live at Affiliate World, because we're working with Motion app-

Brett:

Nice.

Nick:

... which has some really good data on what's happening, where it's happening, and what insights that are having on their campaign, elements needed in creative. And then we have a large volume of assets on the constant side. So I'm trying to pull all the assets that we've seen perform before and all the assets that we've seen being requested, trying to pull a correlation between the two. And it should be some interesting stuff that we're going to find out, because a lot of this that people don't have, and I hate to hate to call it out, but they don't have a process of feedback loop. They don't have the understanding of when they need to go back and analyze and launch it. They can come up with great ideas, but how long does it take for them to make that test, or how long does it take for them to get information back to the people to create more?

Brett:

Just absolutely fantastic. So unfortunately, we're kind of running out of time, which is a bummer because I would like to continue to geek out or geek up here with you, but I want to kind of go high level for just a minute and just a few questions that I think will help anybody. And I think as people have been listening, hey, we got really technical, we got into some details, so pass this on to your media buyer. If you are a media buyer, I'm sure you're just salivating and loving every second of this. Let's talk high level, Nick. What should people be focusing more on in the coming year? And what should they be focusing less on? Meaning, kind of how are things shifting? What do we need to be really keying in on to get results? And maybe, what are some things that used to be important to pay attention to that now aren't?

Nick:

Great question. Fantastic questions. If you're media buyers or your agencies or your team is coming to you with audience insights or campaign structure insights, I would encourage them to let that go and encourage them to stop spending the time in finding structures and more spending the time on the research of what are these campaigns doing? What are the messages being said in the creative or content? And it has always been content first.

Brett:

All right, Spicy Curry listeners, here's the deal. Nick's audio cut out towards the end. Now, the good news is you heard 99% plus of what Nick had to say, but what you missed is kind of important. You missed how to get a hold of Nick. How can you follow him? How can you learn more about him? How can you get in touch with his agency? And so I'm going to tell you right now. The first thing is you have to follow Nick on Twitter. His Twitter game is an A plus. If you're in the DOC space, e-comm space at all, you got to follow him. And his handle is @iamshackelford. So letter I A-M Shackelford, so check that out. His agency is Structured. So structured.agency, check it out. They cut their teeth on paid social, but they also, Nick and Chase Dimond run an email marketing agency, so check out structured as well.

Brett:

And then one of my favorite events now. I think you should check it out. The events do get a little bit technical and nerdy, but GeekOut that Nick runs with James Van Elswyk, great event. So that's geekoutedu.com. So, check that out. You will not be disappointed. And as always, we want to hear from you. If you found this episode to be helpful, please share it with friends. Also, this is a brand new podcast, so go give it a rating on Apple iTunes, if you don't mind. It will make my day. It will allow other people to find the show. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

Few people understand Facebook Advertising and Direct Response Marketing like Molly Pittman. You’ve probably seen Molly on stage at events like Traffic & Conversion Summit or Social Media Marketing World or you’ve seen her and Ezra Firestone create amazing content through Smart Marketer. In this episode we dive into a subject that is often glossed over - creating great offers and building acquisition funnels. Without a great offer, your ad efforts will fall short. And great offers aren’t just about discounting. 

‍

It’s the perfect subject to help you win in a privacy-first online world. 

‍

Here's what we cover:

• How Smart Marketer and BOOM are building and launching new acquisition funnels every month.
• How to test offers via email before investing in ad dollars.
• What metrics we should pay attention to in a post iOS 14 world.
• 3 ways to get more testimonials.
• What is likely to change in the future and what most likely won’t. 

‍
Mentioned in This Episode:

Molly Pittman

   - LinkedIn

   - Instagram

Smart Marketer‍

Smart Marketer Podcast‍

Ezra Firestone‍

Traffic & Conversion Summit‍

John Grimshaw‍

BOOM! by Cindy Joseph‍

“5 Makeup Tips For Older Women”‍

“The State Of Paid Ads In 2022”‍

“Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert

“Good to Great” by Jim Collins‍

“Turning the Flywheel” by Jim Collins

Transcript:

Brett:

Welcome to the Spicy Curry podcast, where we explore hot takes in e-commerce and digital marketing. We feature some of the brightest minds, some of the spiciest perspectives on how to grow your business online.

Brett:

Season one of this podcast is built on the old business adage that all it takes is three things to grow. One, have something good to say. Two, say it well. And three, say it often. My guest today is Molly Pittman. She's the CEO of Smart Marketer in partnership with Ezra Firestone. We're talking about crafting irresistible offers and building acquisition funnels for e-commerce.

Brett:

So, lean in, buckle up, and enjoy this episode with Molly Pittman.

Brett:

The Spicy Curry podcast is brought to you by OMG Commerce, Attentive, OneClickUpsell, Zipify Pages, and Payability.

Brett:

My guest today really needs no introduction, but I'll give a quick introduction just in case. Today, we're talking about a variety of things. We're going to talk about getting the right offers, and we're going to talk about acquisition funnels. We're going to talk about getting the right mindset as a market, as a media buyer, and as an advertiser.

Brett:

I have the one, the only, Molly Pittman joining me on the show today. Really, if you haven't had the privilege of hearing Molly Pittman, well we're about to fix that, but you've missed out. Molly is a legend, debuted at Trafficking Conversion Summit. It's been years and years ago now, I don't even know how many years. But just blew up and everyone was like, "Man, Molly Pittman is the best," and she is.

Brett:

Now she's partnered with my buddy, Ezra Firestone. Molly is the CEO of Smart Marketer, and I get to observe what she's doing there, what the team is doing there, and they're cranking out amazing content, amazing training that I get to be a part of at some level, which is super fun for me. We're going to dive into what's working now and a variety of other things.

Brett:

Molly Pittman, welcome to the show, and thanks for taking the time.

Molly:

Hey, let's do it. What's up, Brett Curry?

Brett:

What's up? What's up?

Molly:

I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to be here. Hello to all of you listers. You're listening to an awesome podcast, huh? When Brett reached out to do this, I was like, "Hey, it's about time." I know you've had podcasts in the past, but excited to hear you more regularly. Yes, love working with you Brett, from the agency side of things, the faculty side of things at Smart Marketer. All of our students love everything you have to share. So, thank you for having me.

Brett:

We get to collaborate on some content. Any time I can go somewhere and hang out with you, John Grimshaw, and Ezra Firestone, I am saying yes to that. Anytime I can make it happen, I'm doing that, because you guys are awesome. [crosstalk 00:03:14].

Molly:

I don't know how much work we get done, but we have a lot of fun.

Brett:

A decent amount of work.

Molly:

I'm kidding.

Brett:

Totally. When we get together, like the last time we all met at Ezra's house, Ezra just cooked some really fancy, simple... He went into full-on chef mode for everybody, and it was pretty amazing.

Molly:

Hey, Ezra is the servant leader. I think we were there-

Brett:

He really is.

Molly:

... hosting a live workshop, and Ezra was like, "Hey, my job right now is to cook and make sure you all are fed." Good example of leadership right there.

Brett:

[crosstalk 00:03:49] make some lattes, or pour some espresso shots. He had this amazing espresso machine-

Molly:

"What do you need? I got it."

Brett:

Yeah. The funny thing is, I'm like, "So Ezra, are you going to drink some espresso?" He was like, "No, I gave that up." He quit. All right, so you're just making for everybody else.

Molly:

That is something that I love about what we're doing at Smart Marketer, is its different from any culture I've ever been a part of, even if it's a day of consulting inside of a business where we really do have fun first. We get our stuff done. We meet our goals. We serve the world. I think that that fun part is what a lot of people are missing out on. It is okay to have fun, and it actually makes the rest of it way more enjoyable and profitable.

Brett:

It's stress relief. It allows you get the right mindset, like fosters creativity when you're having fun and enjoying what you do, and enjoying who you're doing it with. Yeah, you guys do such a good job with that, and Ezra kind of drives that forward where it's like to serve to the world unselfishly and profit that mantra is true. It's not just something that sounds good, or sort of feels good, or looks good on a shirt. It's the way you guys live and the way you guys operate.

Brett:

I think it's part of the reason why we get along so well. We're huge advocates of culture, and putting people first, but also letting people shine and be themselves. You should enjoy working with one another. It makes a difference.

Molly:

Have more fun, y'all.

Brett:

And have more fun.

Molly:

It also allows a lot more longevity in this business. This year, I've been doing this 10 years, which isn't as long as a lot of you, Brett, or people like Ezra, but it's still a decade.

Brett:

Wait a minute. That sounded a veiled "old person" comment there.

Molly:

Well no, I just know your story.

Brett:

It's all good.

Molly:

You have seniority.

Brett:

A little bit. A little bit, yeah. In Internet years, a decade is forever. Yeah, I started like 2004, so I'm definitely the old dude when it comes to all that.

Molly:

Yeah, but you know a lot of my story where I had the opportunity to intern, and then become the VP of Marketing at Digital Marketer, and had an awesome time at that company. But man, I was grinding then. A lot of times, I felt like crap. To be in a situation where I still get to serve the market, still get to teach, still get to be in this business, but feel really good about it, the best part of it is I know I can do it for so much longer now.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah.

Molly:

It's a long game. It's not a short game, y'all.

Brett:

I'm really glad we brought this up. It was not planned. That feel good, have fun, and it will bring out the best part of you when you work as well. You'll be able to produce better when you're doing those things.

Brett:

Let's dive in, Molly Pittman. We've got a lot of ground to cover. We're going to talk mindset. We're going to talk tactics. We're going to talk strategy. I also want to talk about your dog rescue. We'll get to that in a little bit. Let's talk about offers for a minute. Those that have been listening, and hopefully you're listening to every episode in season one of this podcast, we're talking about something good to say, saying it well, saying it often.

Brett:

One of the things you and I were chatting about, and I love this, is that you're really focusing on your offers right now, and what offers are working, and what offers are not working. It really digs into that saying things well, and also saying them often. Talk to me a little bit about... We have two angles we're going to look at. We've got Boom on the e-commerce side, Smart Marketer which is kind of on the info training side, but what offers are working right now?

Molly:

Yeah, great question. First, I want to talk about what an offer is. I realized during our Mastermind call last week that people use this word to describe a lot of different things. That causes confusion in itself. There are a few different ways to talk about an offer. Really, what I'm talking about today are acquisition offers. Essentially, what vehicles are we using to start a conversation with someone who's never heard of our brand before, and turn them into a buyer?

Molly:

A lot of times, that means a lead magnet, or a pre-sale article, or some sort of coupon. It definitely depends on the business and where you are currently. The more, especially post-iOS 14 with all the crazy stuff happening in paid media right now, the more that you can focus on your offers, the better that everything is going to go. I mean that in a few ways. Number one, putting more time into offer creation. I would say in both businesses, other than making sure our products, the things people are buying, are good. Other than that, I would say offer creation is where we spend most of our time, at least at the C level.

Molly:

When it comes to marketing strategy, offer creation is where we spend most of our time. Sometimes, we'll release an offer that John, Ezra and I have maybe spent 15 hours discussing. It looks like an opt-in page that took 30 minutes to write, but so much time and effort went into the psychology of what it is, and the delivery of what it is, and how it sets us up to sell. It's really, really spending time here. As the CEO, I'd be like this is one of my still most important duties every single day.

Molly:

The second part of it is thinking about the way you deliver it. People miss out on this part of offer creation because what we don't realize is that someone might be interested in solving a particular problem, or they might be interested in a particular topic. But they may not be interested in the way you're delivering it. Let's take Boom for example, a pre-sale article that Ezra has been using for over five years, that's the best acquisition offer ever created for that business is five makeup tips for older women. Simple pre-sale article, we optimize for purchases, there are different products on the page. It's an amazing, amazing pre-sale article.

Molly:

Well guess what? It also works really well as a lead magnet. A way we've been able to scale that business is to take that pre-sale article, turn it into a simple PDF, and put it behind an opt-in wall. There are some people that would rather give their email in exchange for an asset, and see that as higher value. There are some people that would rather read an article. So, this isn't just about the creation of new offers, but also the repackaging of assets that you already have to deliver them in a way that's going to reach more of the market that you're trying to reach based off of how they like to consume information.

Molly:

It's why videos and still images are equally as important on a paid traffic platform, because there are some people that like people. There are some people that react images. It's important to keep both of those in mind.

Brett:

I love that. So, what is the offer, and really crafting it and thinking about how do we make this offer irresistible, how do we craft this article so that someone says, "I have to have that. One, that designed just for me. Two, that's solving a real problem or it's meeting a real need. Three, I got to have it right now." [crosstalk 00:11:29] those things. Then also, how you actually deliver it.

Brett:

I want to break that down just a little bit. You had mentioned that sometimes you, John, and Ezra spend 15 hours crafting an offer where it looks like just a simple page, but you're really thinking about this. This goes way beyond the, "Oh, should we do a 10% discount? Or a 15% discount?" That's what I want to talk about here.

Molly:

Yes, but it's also different. What I would see, I would say, in 90% of students, is they spend those 15 hours on the ad, and "Oh, the offer, I'm just going to throw a page up there." It's like, no if you have to choose, it should actually be the other way around.

Brett:

The offer, yeah. Yeah, it totally makes sense. Walk us through a little bit. What is your process as you're thinking about crafting an offer? What questions are you asking? What are you thinking about? What do you want to have in front of you as you're building that irresistible offer?

Molly:

Of course. The first question is, what do we need? What need is there in the business that we are solving with this offer? So, the need might be "It's Q4 and we want to monetize, we need a sale, we need a promotion." Or the need might be, "Hey, we need more of an evergreen acquisition offer-"

Brett:

[crosstalk 00:12:48] need as business [crosstalk 00:12:49].

Molly:

As a business, exactly.

Brett:

Yep.

Molly:

So, is it more promotional? Monetization? Or do we need something more acquisition that's evergreen that's going to continue to bring new customers in? It always starts with what does the business need right now? We try to create one of these in each business once a month we're creating a new offer. A lot of times, we're using other offers that we've created in the past, but we try to create one new offer every single month. It first starts with "What do we need? What does the business need right now?"

Brett:

Awesome. Then what comes next? You understand "This is what we need. We need something evergreen. We need a quick hit in this area. This is what need as a business." What do you look at next?

Molly:

What are we going to sell? What is the true end goal of this offer? Maybe the end goal is for Smart Marketer, we're going to sell our Smart Paid Traffic course, and we want to do that on an evergreen basis. We always work backwards with offers. If you don't, you're going to end up with a funnel that doesn't really make a lot of sense, that might have a really attractive front end offer, but doesn't transition to the sale, which is the opposite of what we're looking for.

Brett:

Yeah, totally, totally makes sense.

Molly:

Then we pick-

Brett:

[crosstalk 00:14:10]. Yeah, please keep going.

Molly:

Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Then we pick the medium, so what medium do we feel is best suited for this particular scenario? That definitely comes down to business type. It comes down to what's already working in our business, what can we do more of, also what can we do that's different from what we've done in the past because maybe we have four or five evergreen acquisition offers running in our ad account. To add another, we either need to go after a different audience or we need to have a very different offer type that isn't going to compete with what we're currently doing.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Let's look at some examples here related to Boom that I think will help people a lot. You guys are working on an acquisition funnel every month, and that acquisition funnel I would assume, starts with an offer. Is that where that begins?

Molly:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Brett:

What does that look like? Can you talk about any examples there for Boom?

Molly:

A great example of this is going back to "Five Makeup Tips for Older Women", the pre-sale article. We know that that works, so we know that this audience wants makeup tips, or they want to have discussions around makeup. What is something similar but different that we could do? Last year, we launched a lead magnet. We switched the delivery. It's not a pre-sale article. It's something you're opting in for. We're collecting the email address, and then going for the sale.

Molly:

So, using what we know works, but changing the conversation a little bit. Instead of five makeup tips, it was, or is, a 10 Minute Makeup Guide. So, still speaking to makeup, but now speaking to women who are less maybe concerned about the tips, but are more interested in the fact, "Holy crap, this only takes 10 minutes." That's an awesome speed and automation hook. That would be a good example of saying-

Brett:

[crosstalk 00:16:16] how to take care of your makeup, or how to do your morning makeup routine in 10 minutes or something like that, that's kind of the angle or the thought?

Molly:

Exactly. That came from a need of we have scaled the current evergreen acquisition offers as much as we can across our paid traffic sources. We need something new to talk about. We need to be able to walk into the party and have a similar, but different, discussion. Okay, let's change the topic and let's change the vehicle in how we deliver it.

Brett:

Yeah, that's awesome. The five makeup tips, and yeah we've had the privilege of running that on YouTube for four years or five years or something, and it still works. The five makeup tips is great. It does appeal to the curiosity. People are like, "Okay, well I would like makeup tips. I'm over 50," and I should not, by the way we were talking old jokes, I'm not over 50, and I'm not a woman either, so you're thinking "I want to know what these tips are," so there's a little bit of curiosity and there's also some benefit there that you want to get, which is cool.

Brett:

But this 10 Minute Makeup Guide, that's speaking to someone who says... It really resonates well with that over 50 powerful women audience that Boom is after, is they're like, "I don't have time for makeup, and I don't want to take the time. 30 minutes getting ready for the day, no way." How did you guys land on that? Was that something that you heard consistent feedback from customers? Is there something you guys started to pick up on, because you know the customer? Where did that come from?

Molly:

In both businesses, these ideas usually come from the customer, or feedback to anything that we're doing from an organic standpoint. In our businesses, that's the benefit of social media. It's not that we're going for all this organic traffic, which is nice, but not always sustainable. We use social media as a way to test different conversations with the audience. Usually, this starts, for Smart Marketer, as a blog post, for example, and Boom, too.

Molly:

Last year, we've released a blog post about our "Love Demo Love Formula" which is a formula we teach to [crosstalk 00:18:23]-

Brett:

Formerly known as "The Testimonial Sandwich", so there was the artist formerly as "Testimonial Sandwich", that "Love Demo Love". Feels better.

Molly:

It's a formula, a template that we teach for ad creatives. We see that that does really well on the blog. The email has high open rates. People are spending a lot of time on that page. They're clicking on whatever call to action is within that blog post. Wow, this is something our audience is interested in. Can we turn this into some sort of acquisition offer? Sometimes, it also comes-

Brett:

Yeah, [crosstalk 00:18:54] clarify, just so people understand because you may be lost like, "What are you talking about? Love Demo Love, and with Testimony? What the heck?" It's Ezra's tried and true ad formula of starting with a testimonial, a real user-generated content testimonial, or maybe a couple, like one to three, product demonstration in the middle, product video demonstration in the middle of the video, and then you close with more testimonials or more love. So, "Love Demo Love", and also what used to be called the "Testimonial Sandwich".

Brett:

So, anyway, I just wanted to clarify for those that are like, "What are you talking about?" All right, go ahead.

Molly:

A lot of times, it comes from conversations with the audience, a response from the audience. Then sometimes, it comes just random inspiration. For Smart Marketer, an offer we're working on right now that's going to happen soon is the "State of Paid Advertising in 2022", which is a free four hour workshop. It will show an analysis we did of over $60 million in ad spend. That just came from a random idea I had in the shower, what would this audience be interested in, how can I help set them up for 2022? It's not always coming from the customer. Sometimes it's just a random idea that comes in when you give it space.

Molly:

Usually, it is coming from something that already exists, or that we see from competition, or other people out in the market.

Brett:

Just an interesting side note, are you an idea in the shower person? Is that where your ideas come from? I'd just be curious to know where do your good ideas come from? What's the space where disproportionately you have good ideas coming from that space?

Molly:

It's really whenever I give it space. That's the key. It's usually, in today's world where things are so busy, forced space, time away from my phone, which is the shower, which is driving in the car, or hiking. If you guys are interested in this topic, read "Big Magic" by Elizabeth Gilbert. It's one of my favorite books. I read it in 2015 or '16, but she basically explains how this works, like how does creativity actually work and how can you set yourself up to be more open to cool ideas? The cool ideas are out there. Most of us are just too shut off, too busy, too addicted to what we're doing to allow the ideas to actually come in. So yes, any time you give it-

Brett:

What was the name of that book again?

Molly:

"Big Magic".

Brett:

"Big Magic". Love that. I'm going to check that out. Just a quick note here, because I've always found this fascinating, I have zero good ideas in the shower. I really don't know that I've ever had one positive, useful, meaningful idea from the shower other than "Hey babe, we're out of shampoo." That's all I think about in the shower. However, for me, two places that I get disproportionately high amount of good ideas, one is if in the morning if I get up when it's still quiet, and I have eight kids so it needs to be early in the morning when it's quiet, but if I feel like I'm ahead of the game, if I feel like there's nothing that I have to do right that second and I can just kind of sit in the quiet, good ideas come from there.

Brett:

The other place, and this is an odd one, but on airplanes. I sit on an airplane. They shut that door. I never pay for WiFi, I just don't want to. Some of the ideas that have shaped OMG, that have shaped the agency, came from me sitting on an airplane. I don't know why. That's my shower time. I even said a few times, I'm like I should just go fly somewhere and then fly right back, and I'm going to get great ideas.

Molly:

A lot of people do that. I have a friend who took a flight to Hong Kong and back, and never even stepped into the city just to write a book. The reason for that Brett, those are different forms of meditation. It's the same thing. It's essentially cutting off stimulation that is-

Brett:

Right, there's nothing else.

Molly:

... keeping your brain busy so that your mind and your soul can be quiet, so that these ideas can really formulate. That's the key.

Brett:

I love that. I love the fact that I'm not the only one that loves... I don't even like sitting on airplanes, but I get the best ideas. Anyway, cool. That's awesome. Cool, so thank you for chasing down that rabbit trail. I think that's so useful. Where were we though?

Molly:

We were talking about offers that are working right now, and I was chatting about the 10 Minute Makeup Guide, the workshop we're doing for Smart Marketer, and just saying that lot of the ideas comes from what you guys say, what we see as a need out in the market. A lot of them are random, unique, creative ideas, which are fun too.

Brett:

So, really fostering both, so you kind of need a vehicle or a mechanism to collect that feedback from customers, and then you need to create space for yourself to have these good ideas, and then bring it together with your executive team to get the idea when you're relaxing or whatever, and then you bring it to the rest of the executive team and you hammer that out. It may be 15 hours, but at the end of that time you've got a killer offer that you can really use to grow the business.

Molly:

Yeah, Brett, and some other steps that I didn't mention there, just to sort of round out the actual tactical, how do we get it out the door. Once we have the idea and we feel good about the offer, we feel good about its ability to do what we need it to do in the business, then we go into action mode actually creating this thing. That usually looks like a brainstorm call with our copy team where we discuss what is this, and how is it going to be presented?

Molly:

We talk about the big hooks, what are the big selling points of this offer, what problems does this offer actually solve? Of course, how do we want this to be delivered? Is it a PDF? Is it a pre-sale article? Is it a simple opt-in page where we're giving a coupon, like you said? How will this be delivered. Then they're able to go and make it sound good, not only the page in which we're selling the thing, but also the delivery of the thing. Then of course, that's passed off to design, it's passed off to our ads team and everything starts to get into motion.

Brett:

It's so good to get copy involved early, because that's such an important part of everything else. You have to be able to really strike that cord and make people want it, and copy is such a huge part of that. I love that you do that fairly early on.

Molly:

Yeah, and it's not just writing the copy that is the offer. It's also the selling of the offer. Even if it's a free thing, you're still selling someone on the idea.

Brett:

Totally. Totally, yeah.

Molly:

Every new acquisition funnel is first tested through an email promotion to the list, because we don't want to go out and buy-

Brett:

Okay, so you build the product, you test the email, email to the list first.

Molly:

Yeah. Of course, it's always going to convert better to your list than it will to paid traffic. We want to test it to the list first before we start to buy ads, mainly because we want to see of course, what's the conversion rate on this thing if it's free, and does this actually generate sales? We can create offers all day, but if it's not meeting the need of the business, then it's not going to work. It's first tested to email. That also gets some good traction going on your pixel so that Facebook and Google can start to see what types of people are taking action on this page, get some momentum.

Molly:

Then we stop for a second. We look at heat maps. We look at conversion rate. We look at the performance from a data standpoint. We make any optimizations that we might need to make, and then it's ready to go to you and your team, and hand over to our media buyer for paid ads.

Brett:

I love that. I love that. So, you're testing to the email list first to understand does this convert. And hey, if it doesn't convert to your list, it's not going to convert to cold traffic.

Molly:

Exactly.

Brett:

So, does it convert, and at what level, and kind of understanding that a little bit. Then you're going to run some ads and start getting conversions, trying to pixel, finding out what's what. You pause that. You then look at heat maps, make some tweaks/optimizations to the funnel itself. Then you go ham on the advertising at that point.

Molly:

Then it's hopefully ready for scale. Probably half of these that we create don't work still to this day. That's okay. We say, "Let's put it on hold for a second." It's never that this just doesn't work, and we're not going to use it ever again. It's "Hey, let's put this to the side and try to figure out why it didn't work, and maybe we can use it later." There are a lot of times that we just can't get it to work, and that's okay.

Brett:

Right. Really, you guys are the best. You're the best in the world at some of this stuff. If you've got a 50% success rate, what's everybody else going to have? That's likely to be 50% or maybe less even. What's interesting, we just walked through that four step process you guys go through, most people it's like think for five minutes about an offer, maybe it's more than that, but think about an offer and then "All right cool, let's throw a bunch of media behind it to see how it does," where you guys are testing with your audience or email list, you're running some small tests and ads, you're getting data, you're optimizing and then you're going big. I love that so much.

Brett:

It kind of goes back to one of my favorite business principles that comes from Jim Collins, the author of "Good to Great", and a book called "Turning the Flywheel". He's an awesome... I'm sure everybody's heard of him. He talks about this concept of firing bullets and then cannonballs. He used kind of this old warship analogy. The idea is fire bullets to make sure you got something that works, and then fire a cannonball rather than a lot of people fire a cannonball and they use up all their gunpowder, and all they've got available, and they're like, "Well now I've got nothing."

Brett:

So, test small and then go big.

Molly:

Also, understanding that these offers are not channel-specific. A lot of people create an offer, which they don't spend a lot of time on. They set up a Facebook campaign. They run it for a few days, and then scrap it all. "Oh, this offer doesn't work, and Facebook ads don't work." It's like guys, no it's so much deeper than that.

Brett:

Totally. Totally. Your kind of creating these acquisition funnels then for Boom, and spoiler alert, Boom is going to be releasing new products this year, which is great. Your kind of creating one of these acquisition funnels for each product. That was another thing too with Boom, and Ezra talks about this a lot, that it was just the Boom stick trio, or just the boom stick, that's all that you really use for cold traffic. Now you're building these acquisition funnels for other products, which is huge, and which is going to be a game changer.

Molly:

Look, honestly acquisition funnels are way easier for e-commerce than info or services.

Brett:

They are. They are. No doubt.

Molly:

Info and services takes way more of relationship buildup before someone purchases. It's mainly lead generation through a workshop, or a webinar, or a lead magnet, or a challenge, or a mini series, or whatever the hell people are doing today to try to convert someone into a customer or client. It's a little bit of a different ballgame than e-commerce. A lot of the plays with e-comm can be easier. A lot of the offers that Boom runs are simple. It's direct to a product page for a lip gloss, direct to a product page for a mascara, direct to something that's a direct sale essentially. Where with info, we've got to dance around it a little bit more. The offer creation is even more intensive for that business type.

Brett:

Yeah, it is.

Molly:

Like me. Good lesson, what Ezra has been able to do with Boom I think after working with us at Smart Marketer, is realize that there is a huge hole in the e-commerce space for offer creation that isn't just a giveaway, that isn't just direct to product page, that isn't just a coupon. That is a big reason Boom is able to excel, because we do understand pre-sale articles. We do understand lead magnets.

Molly:

Boom is even doing webinars. They're called "Ladies Night". These principles work for both business types, and there's actually a much bigger opportunity in e-commerce to get more creative with your offers because other e-commerce businesses are simply lazy or don't know how to go about it.

Brett:

You nailed it a little bit ago when you said that in a lot of ways offers for e-commerce, it's simpler. It's more straightforward than it is to do info products. Info products, you really got to get to the core of what this thing, and what is it going to unlock, and what are all the emotions we're trying to tap into here, and uncover here.

Molly:

And give way more value first.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah. How do you do that? So kind of blending some of those principles, it's super powerful and it's definitely helped Boom get to where it is today without a doubt. Cool. We've got a few additional things I want to talk about, and not a whole lot of time to do it-

Molly:

Brett, hold on. I want to add one more thing. This is one of the biggest reasons that you might be failing to scale as an e-commerce business. If you are only relying on the people that are clicking from a Facebook ad, and directly converting and buying a product, you're missing out on a huge part of your market that just isn't ready to buy in the moment. If you're able to generate the lead, if you're able to nurture them via email, if you're able to set up a funnel where they get some sort of discount, especially if you add some scarcity, your scalability will increase in a way that you never understood, and it has absolutely nothing to do with your advertising. It's just that you are having a conversation with a different part of the market. That's all it is.

Molly:

So, if you are struggling to scale, it's probably not the ad platform, and B, the e-comm company that is willing to go outside of the box.

Brett:

Yeah, totally agree. It's not just I need to bid differently, I need a slightly different campaign structure in my ads manager or inside of Google Ads. Those things may be true, but often it comes down to offer and having the right funnel. Are we actually getting people to give us their email address and get a direct conversion as well? Do we have a nurture sequence? Do we have a remarketing sequence built in? All of those things really unlock the ability to scale rather than just "How do I bid differently or change my campaign structure?"

Molly:

Brett, I would say that your most successful clients, and the ones that you like working with the most are probably strong in this area. As an agency, that's a dream.

Brett:

No doubt. No doubt.

Molly:

The issue you usually have an agency is that you're great at running ads. You only have a few places to run ads to. There's only so much you can do.

Brett:

Yeah, that's one reason we love working with Boom.

Molly:

Just emphasize.

Brett:

You guys get it, and we're just able to work together and crush it. That's fantastic. Cool. Any quick insights, and I kind of designed this podcast series to have a long shelf life, but let's talk about a few trends. What's working right now, or what are some trends inside of Facebook ads that you're seeing right now?

Molly:

Good news is, as we do each year, we're seeing a huge decrease in ad cost at the beginning of the year. Almost 50% cheaper in most of our ad accounts in the analysis. We did over $60 million in spend than what we were seeing Q4, which is a huge relief with the dumpster fire that Facebook was the last six months of 2021.

Brett:

No doubt.

Molly:

That's a huge sigh of relief. We're also starting to see more accurate reporting, or at least I think we're all getting better as marketers getting our stuff together from a tracking standpoint. So, things are looking up, and we are working on offers, working on creative and copy right now so we can really take advantage of the next few months of cheap traffic, and try to do everything we can to set us up for a big Q4 again this year.

Brett:

I love it. Just one thing to keep in mind, this is going to likely always be the trend. Advertisers panic in fourth quarter because costs are going through the roof. But the costs are going to come back down in Q1, so be planning, and be thinking about that, and what's your acquisition strategy going to be in Q1 and then as you lead into and get ramped up for Q4. So, that's awesome.

Brett:

Any other specific trends you want to talk about now? I also want to dig into a mindset just a little bit, which will be fun.

Molly:

Really quick, I wouldn't say this is necessarily a new trend for right now, but it's something we've been preaching for a few years that I just literally cannot emphasize enough. I was actually just on a training call with some of our students, and one of them sells physical products. He's in the snack and wellness space. His Facebook ad results that I was looking at were incredible, $0.04 clicks, 15% click through rate, $3.00 add to cart, numbers I have not seen in years.

Molly:

Guess what he's doing from an ad perspective? It's native advertising. It's user-generated content. It is simply telling stories about people in their own words the experience that they had not even specifically with your product. This was a weight loss product. So, his best performing ad was a picture of a beach with an arrow to a certain area of the beach. The copy was telling a story from the customer's standpoint of, "Last year I went to this beach and I couldn't even walk up the stairs without getting out of breath. I felt terrible, and my health wasn't great. This year, 12 months later, I've gone back to this beach. I've lost 90 pounds. I was able to run around, and I really enjoyed myself."

Molly:

Those weren't the exact words, but that's how simple it was. It wasn't an ad about the product. It wasn't an ad about how great this product was. Absolutely nothing about features. Really, not even a lot of benefits other than the benefits that were woven into the story. This isn't necessarily new, but it's what people are still missing out on when it comes to Facebook and Instagram. These are true social platforms. People are used to engaging with stories from family and friends. Use imagery and copy that is that. It's really that simple.

Brett:

I love it. I don't really ever see that changing. We spend a lot of on YouTube and running YouTube ads, and we're seeing similar things in that videos, and usually you need slightly longer videos on YouTube than you do on Facebook in most cases, but still that user-generated content, those testimonial videos that you could weave into your YouTube ad works there too. I think it's always going to work. As long as it's an authentic, genuine testimonial that really hits on "Here's how my life has changed. Here's why I love this product. Here's my story," people eat that up. I think people will always eat that up if it rings authentic.

Molly:

Because it's a testimonial, that's not what makes it work. We chat about this and then students submit a testimonial, and the first line is "I love this product so much." It's like, guys that's words of customer, but it sounds like an ad. We need to start with things like, "As a mom of two, I didn't think I would have time to do X, Y, and Z." How much more relatable is that? It doesn't feel like you are being sold to.

Brett:

Yeah, one time we had a prospect, and we ended up not working with him. He submits these videos and you could literally read the people that are supposed to be customers. You could watch their eyes reading from a teleprompter. I'm like, "Guys, this not going to work." You want people to be sharing real emotion and their real story.

Molly:

Yeah, well sharing a life story. It's not about why the product's great. It is sharing their story and how it fit into their lives. So, we ask three important questions to get really good testimonials. If you ask these questions, it will set people up to give you really good answers. What was life like before you bought this product? That has them describe that undesirable before state, starts to tell their story. What is life like afterwards? Now they're talking about the after state, the benefits, how much better they feel. Then if you were to re-commend this to a friend, what exactly would you say? When you say it like that, they take off their "I'm a salesperson for this company" hat, and they put on their "Oh, I'm writing a message, or speaking a message to a friend. I'm going to be real about how this product helped me."

Brett:

Love that so much. Actually, since I'm such a believer in testimonials, but getting authentic ones, I created "The Ultimate Guide", I don't remember what I called it, but how to get authentic customer testimonials. It's on the OMG Commerce website. Check it out. I'm not sure if I have those exact [crosstalk 00:40:34]-

Molly:

That's sounds like a good offer for your agency, Brett.

Brett:

It's a good offer. Yeah. We can do that as an offer too for Smart Marketer. It's so true. The difference between a really good testimonial and then an average testimonial is two different planets, two different universes. Getting a good testimonial is worth it's weight in gold. Having one that's average, is really going to do nothing for you, or one that's weak. Anyway, I love that.

Brett:

What was life like before? What was life like after? What would you say to a friend? I love that so much. It's also good, you want to give someone a little bit of help as they're creating a testimonial. Otherwise, it feels like they're staring at a screen and not knowing what to say, or looking at a blank page or whatever. So, giving them some help is key, for sure. I love that. Love that.

Brett:

Let's take just a couple of minutes, and we're going to be short-changing this topic for sure, but I wanted to take a couple of minutes because this will be fun and I think it's useful. It's been a difficult road the last couple of years for e-commerce, entrepreneurs, media buyers, online advertisers, not rough [crosstalk 00:41:47]. E-commerce has grown tremendously. That's been good. E-commerce has grown, so no complaints there.

Brett:

But it's challenging times. I know you train a lot of people, you train a lot of entrepreneurs and media buyers. What are you teaching people about mindset and how mindset impacts results?

Molly:

Mindset is everything in this game. I don't think any of us are maybe even better marketers than one another. It's your willingness to stay committed, and to continue forward. It's what we talked about earlier with us being okay with half of the work we do not actually being used. Or as a media buyer, it's not even about who can set up the best ads. It's about who can continue to troubleshoot and optimize to make each piece of the campaign better so that they can move forward.

Molly:

This is personal development, a concept that most of you have heard of before, but it's really the difference between having a scarcity mindset, or having an abundance mindset. For me, I choose to be grateful. I choose to not get upset with these paid traffic platforms. I choose to look at things with the glass half full. I think that if there was anything unique about our culture at Smart Marketer, that is it. We have all chosen this mindset.

Molly:

There is going to be trouble in anything you do. I think as a human, the last few years have been hard. It's easy to get down. Of course, I still get frustrated, angry, depressed. All of those things occur. But I try to choose to bring positivity to our business, try to bring it to our employees, to our offers, to the trainings that we provide. It really is a completely different experience when you choose to do that.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. I'm a really positive person. I'm naturally upbeat. I'm a glass half full kind of guy. But I have my moments. I have moments where I want to curse Tim Cook for the latest iOS update, and why are you killing a good thing, Tim Cook? Or whoever else is making the decisions at Apple. We can get in that mindset. It's okay to be frustrated and complain a little bit, but don't stay there.

Brett:

Get to a better place, because you're right, it's not just who's the smartest, it's not just who has the best campaign structure, but who can show up consistently and do the right thing, and who can be okay with "Okay, I got one, two, three campaigns that I wrote that didn't work, but then I had an offer that hit and then it scaled to the moon." Who could handle that?

Molly:

And who-

Brett:

Yeah, please add to that.

Molly:

[inaudible 00:44:31], and who actually cares? It's why I so believe-

Brett:

Exactly.

Molly:

... in the mission of our business that Ezra initially set out, serve the world unselfishly, and profit. If you truly care about the group of people that your business serves, and you care about the way that you're changing their lives, even if you're selling a toothbrush and you're helping their mouth to be cleaner, it doesn't matter. If you truly care about that, it changes the energy of the business.

Molly:

I can tell you, if you asked me "Molly, what is the difference between students that succeed or don't succeed, or friends that I know in the industry that have done great things, or people that are struggling," it really comes back to mindset, and it comes back to an authentic, genuine, caring for the group of people that you're serving. If you have that, and you stay consistent, there's no way that you can't make this work.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so true. If you can really be passionate about your customer, and I would even say about your team, then that's way more powerful than just being passionate about your product. I think both are important, but being passionate about your customer and about your team, that's really where's it at. One thing I discovered for me, and hey I've got lofty goals, I want my business to succeed and I want to it to grow, I think entrepreneurship, and businesses, and capitalism offer a lot to the world. If it's just about money, I burn out quickly. I get to a point where I'm like, "I don't really care anymore."

Brett:

But if I think about who I'm serving, and I think about that business owner that my agency is helping accelerate growth for, if I think about team members who were helping accelerate their individual growth, and I get to see someone step and lead a call, or mail a presentation, or come up with a strategy.

Molly:

Nothing better.

Brett:

I'm like "Whoa, I never thought of that." That is so fun for me, and so rewarding. Then when you key in on that, then guess what, the profits are better too, and then the business grows better too.

Molly:

Brett, aside from the money, I saw a study last year that rated digital marketing as the most stressful job or career path out there, even above brain surgeons, or people working in the medical field.

Brett:

That's crazy, yeah.

Molly:

I believe that. Think about it, we're basically day traders.

Brett:

[crosstalk 00:46:47] so much out of your control, and that's a scary thing. There's so much out of your control, it's scary. Yeah.

Molly:

Exactly. To be able to sustain that, and the changes, and the stress, and the fact that what we do never really turns off unless you choose for it to do so your mindset and who you are as a person, and how you treat yourself and the people around you, that is will what will sustain you moving forward more than anything else.

Brett:

Love that. So good. So good, Molly Pittman. All right, so people that are listening that are like, "Holy cow, I need more Molly Pittman in my life," where do you suggest people go? Obviously, there's lots of stuff people are going to enjoy at SmartMarketer.com, but where should someone get started, or what are some cool things, what are some offers you got going on right now?

Molly:

Yeah, check out SmartMarketer.com. There are some free resources there, depending on what we have going on at the time. I know this is coming out a bit later, Brett, so we do have that State of Paid Advertising in 2022 workshop coming up. We have lots of free resources on our website. If you want to follow me, I'm most active on Instagram @MollyPittmanDigital. I also read all of my DMs, so if you have questions, thoughts about this, I love hearing from you all and I would love to hear from you on Instagram.

Brett:

Instagram, check it out. What's your handle again?

Molly:

One more quick thing, Brett.

Brett:

What's your handle again on Instagram?

Molly:

@MollyPittmanDigital.

Brett:

@MollyPittmanDigital.

Molly:

Of course, if you like this format, you like podcasts, John, and Ezra, and I do have a podcast, The Smart Marketer Podcast. So, check that out.

Brett:

It is an intact podcast, where you get to be a guest for a couple of episodes. It was tremendously fun. Check out the Smart Marketer podcast. I'll link to all of this in the show notes as well so it's easy for you to access. With that, Molly Pittman, any final words? Any final words of wisdom, re-commendations, or asks of the audience?

Molly:

Keep doing it. Just keep at it. Take care of yourself. Maintain that balance in your life. Don't get sucked into this world so that you lose who you are. Or if you do, quickly bounce back from that. Just enjoy. We're living in a really cool time as humans, and there's a lot of crazy stuff going on. When have we ever had the opportunity to do what we're doing from a business standpoint?

Molly:

It's complicated, but also the world is truly at our fingertips. Find a group of people that you align with, that you're interested in, that you want to help, and figure out how you can serve them, and figure out what you can sell to them. I just always go back to being grateful that we are able to work in this way. It's really, really cool. Hopefully, you guys enjoy it too.

Brett:

I love it. It's a super challenging industry. It's always changing. It's very stressful. But man, it's fun. It can be fun, especially if you have the right community around you. If you can find that balance man, it's an awesome place to be. Check out Smart Marketer. Check out the community. Get to know Molly Pittman. Follow her on Instagram.

Brett:

With that, thank you so much for tuning in. This show would be nothing without you who tune in and listen faithfully. If you haven't rated the show, please do that. Leave a review. It helps other people find the show. If there's somebody that you're listening to this and you're like, "Whoa, this person needs to hear this episode," then share with them. That would mean the world to me, and I know it'd make a difference in somebody else's life as well.

Brett:

With that, until next time, stay spicy.

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